I ended a post a couple of weeks ago by asking “when will they ever learn” and answering my own question with “never.”

“They” referred to the millions of people who continue to rely on Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. — in spite of every security breech, hack, lie, prevarication, hedge, and excuse — not to mention buying all kinds of smart devices.

So what’s new?

What’s new is that Google won (conned) the right to teach kids how to behave online.

The tech giant is positioning itself in schools as a trusted authority on digital citizenship…

That is the message behind “Be Internet Awesome,” a so-called digital-citizenship education program that the technology giant developed for schools. (…)  Google plans to reach five million schoolchildren with the program this year and has teamed up with the National Parent Teacher Association to offer related workshops to parents.

Impressive, considering that historically the NPTA has been dominantly female (although they’re working to change that) and Google is the company that not only protects high ranking abusers, but pays them millions.

Mr. [Andy] Rubin was one of three executives that Google protected over the past decade after they were accused of sexual misconduct. In two instances, it ousted senior executives, but softened the blow by paying them millions of dollars as they departed, even though it had no legal obligation to do so. In a third, the executive remained in a highly compensated post at the company. Each time Google stayed silent about the accusations against the men.

The spying, listening and other sneaky actions of Google Assistant and Alexa are legion and now Facebook joins the herd, with a new in-home device equipped with microphones and a video camera that can really sell you.

“Portal voice calling is built on the Messenger infrastructure, so when you make a video call on Portal, we collect the same types of information (i.e. usage data such as length of calls, frequency of calls) that we collect on other Messenger-enabled devices. We may use this information to inform the ads we show you across our platforms. Other general usage data, such as aggregate usage of apps, etc., may also feed into the information that we use to serve ads,” a spokesperson said in an email to Recode.

You can bet people will buy it.

Alexa has a particularly creepy approach.

Amazon has submitted a patent application, recently granted, outlining how the company could recommend chicken soup or cough drops to people who use its Echo device if it detects symptoms like coughing and sniffling when they speak to it, according to a report by CNET. It could even suggest a visit to the movies after discerning boredom. Other patents submitted by the company have focused on how it could suggest products to people based on keywords in their conversations.

And, if you have one in the bedroom, just think what Echo could suggest based on what it hears.

Most smart devices cater to “what’s in it for me,” with little concern for their users.

However, some work a bit more for the public good, such as Kinsa smart thermometers, which has a public health focus.

“What this does is help us really target vulnerable populations where we have a clear signal about outbreaks,” Mr. Sarma said.

Mr. Singh, who was an executive vice president at the Clinton Health Access Initiative, said that Kinsa worked only with clients that can help with its mission of preventing the spread of illness through early detection. It made sense to work with Clorox, he said, because of the C.D.C. recommendation about disinfecting.

Since it’s Halloween, we’ll end with a truly terrifying look at Facebook in the detailed review of The Autocracy App by Jacob Weisberg

When will they ever learn?

As every link in this post proves…

Never.

Image credit: Paul Downey

Do you believe that the stuff on blogs moves virally, based on interest or merit, to mainstream media?

If so, you are very naïve.

It moves via manipulation, viz the Hidden Persuaders, by people who are paid to manipulate. (Unfortunately, this cited post won’t make it.)

Ryan Holiday is a marketer and publicist who specializes in manipulating blogs in service of his clients.
(…)
contrary to prevailing wisdom, that most original reporting in online media was done by smaller blogs, (…) by influencing small blogs today, one could alter what was in the Washington Post tomorrow.

Virality is most prevalent in stories with high emotional content, especially anger and awe.

Holiday had no problem with his work when the goal was to sell a product, but when the same tools started to be used to manipulate social and civic attitudes he stopped.

If the effects of this media manipulation were merely to drive customers to products they wouldn’t otherwise buy, Ryan would still probably be out there plying his trade. What caused him to reconsider his profession (and write Trust Me I’m Lying) was the increasing use of these manipulation techniques to spread political ideas, and, in the process, hurt individuals. In the second half of the book, he talks about how sites like Jezebel and Breitbart News use the techniques he pioneered to push product for American Apparel to maximize their own page-views by stoking outrage both among their supporters and their opponents. In his view, much of responsibility for the coarsening and polarization of politics and culture can be laid at the feet of professional manipulators like himself.

Using professional manipulators to change and/or incite public opinion is nothing new.

But the tools at their disposal are more insidious than ever.

Therefore, making caveat emptor your personal slogan makes more sense than ever.

Image credit: Scott Akerman

Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

Sometimes old posts just depress me. I wrote this one in 2008 and it’s still applicable today. With very slight alterations, it would be just as applicable in 1908 or 1808 or even earlier and it will probably be just as applicable in 2118 and beyond.

Expecting companies to “do the right thing” when they think the right thing will impinge on their bottom line is just plain stupid. It hasn’t worked historically and I doubt it will work in the future; certainly not on the tech world, whose arrogance makes Wall Street look humble.

The only thing stupider is businesses’ inability to understand that the right thing is often more profitable — of course, they could take a lesson from Blackrock,  but more about that tomorrow.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

Yesterday I asked, “What else does Wall Street and the financial industry do besides cripple corporate strategic efforts?”

They fight for self-regulation, assuring watchdog agencies and Congress that they are good guys that should be trusted to do the best thing and that the economy will tank if any kind of control or regulation is enacted—and they win.

They win based on the money spent to focus the efforts of well-connected lobbyists on stopping cold, or at least significantly watering down, any legislation or rules that might offer protection to us—the people who keep them all in BMWs and champagne.

Wall Street and the other financial services industries aren’t alone in this, every industry does it, but the money guys seem to be exceptionally successful—until something blows up. Then, when public outcry is loud and tempers are hot, Congress has the leverage to pass anything—whether it fixes the problem or merely makes them look like they care.

Deregulation was one of the prime factors in the S&L mess in the eighties; earnings pressure combined with personal greed fueled many of the recent corporate financial fiascos—think Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia Communications, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, J.P.Morgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, and others.

And now, of course, we have the Sub-prime debacle with which to contend.

And after each of these, Congress, the SEC and others all run to add laws and rules to prevent it from happening again.

The repercussions from the latest snafu (Navy term meaning ‘situation normal—all f*ked up’) are reverberating through the credit markets making it more than difficult for corporations, small business and just plain folks to access it.

Who will step into the breach to provide investment and liquidity?

Private equity and big hedge funds—both with even less regulation and even larger egos and greed factors than more traditional Wall Street firms.

But a land grab by big hedge funds and private equity firms might create new problems. The Securities & Exchange Commission and the Finance Industry Regulatory Authority oversee investment banks to some degree, and the Federal Reserve is moving in that direction. But hedge funds are largely unregulated and aren’t bound to make any disclosures to anyone but their investors. Even that information is often incomplete. A move by hedge funds into traditional corporate finance would mean even less transparency than exists on Wall Street now.

It’s a sad fact that the 214-year-old force that was instrumental in building the most powerful industrial nation on the planet could be just as instrumental in presiding at its demise.

Understand, it’s not that I have much faith in government regulation, but have seen little-to-no proof that self-regulation works—it’s too much like having the fox care for the hen house.

So-called government intrusion is the result of the inability of various industries to “self-regulate” for any reasons other than short-term profit, doing as much they can get away with and pushing the boundaries beyond what’s reasonable.

So you tell me, how can we get well-reasoned laws that aren’t defeated or seriously watered down by special interest groups and industry lobbyists before the crisis?

Image credit: pinkfloyd

The last two posts reminded me of something KG sent (also used here).

It neatly sums up the state of our nation these days.

Actually, it probably sums up the state of every nation on Earth.

That said, it has nothing to do with politics or who is on which side.

You can find every kind of MAP, from far left to far right to none of the above, represented in each of the three categories mentioned.

The pigs go back to the dawn of humanity.

The wolves, too, although their tools today reach farther and are more predatory than ever before.

Sadly, the sheep are multiplying and becoming ever more sheeplike .

Image credit: Internet meme

Yesterday’s post cited a quote from a book, “Power is the ability to sustain illusion.”  At the time, I used it in a post that focused on the idea that powerful people often believed and acted as if the rules didn’t apply to them.

Of course, powerful people — glitterati, politirati, digirati, corporati, religirati — have acted on that premise for centuries; still do and always will.

But there is a difference, actually two differences, between then and now.

The first is the new technology that is blurring and even erasing the separation between truth and lies, reality and fantasy.

The second is far more worrying.

It’s not just people’s willingness to turn a blind eye and rationalize what’s happening, AKA, business as usual.

Rather, it’s their willingness to actively embrace it — often with their eyes wide open.

Not as active protagonists, but as passive ones.

It’s not that they are bad people, but as Edmund Burke said, The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Image credit: Angie Trenz

Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

I wrote this 9 years ago, long before Facebook, Uber, Zenefits, Google, and a myriad of other companies that started on the light side of ‘but me’ and, over time, migrated to the dark side.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

A few days ago I read Fourth Down, Death, an old mystery by Michael T. Hinkemeyer, and I’ve been thinking about how true was the statement, “Power is the ability to sustain illusion.”

We see the illusions fail all the time in the news these days—think Enron, WorldCom, options backdating.

What will it take for the corporate elite to realize that the illusion is fragile and that it takes very little to crack the power that sustains it?

Put another way, when will they stop operating on a “but me” basis? ” As in, “the rules apply to everybody, but me.”

However, “but me” is also

• the mindset that yields the greatest inventions, as when two brothers thought, “everybody thinks that man can’t fly, but us,” and fosters innovation at any level;
• what lets each of us continue functioning in our crazy world, knowing that the bad and scary stuff we hear about in the news can happen to anybody, but me.

Think of “but me” as having both a light side and a dark side—then choose the side on which you want to play.

Please join me tomorrow for an updated look at the quote that started me thinking way back in 2007.

Image credit: Yaniv Ben-Arie

There’s an old saying that stuff comes in threes.

A couple of months ago I wrote Privacy Dies as Facebook Lies.

Today I read a new article regarding Facebook’s data-sharing policies with so-called “service providers,” AKA, hardware partners.

Facebook has reached data-sharing partnerships with at least 60 device makers — including Apple, Amazon, BlackBerry, Microsoft and Samsung (…) to expand its reach and let device makers offer customers popular features of the social network, such as messaging, “like” buttons and address books. (…)

Some device partners can retrieve Facebook users’ relationship status, religion, political leaning and upcoming events, among other data. Tests by The Times showed that the partners requested and received data in the same way other third parties did.

Facebook’s view that the device makers are not outsiders lets the partners go even further, The Times found: They can obtain data about a user’s Facebook friends, even those who have denied Facebook permission to share information with any third parties. (…)

Last Friday KG sent me this image.

Considering the three together made me wonder.

Is Facebook a wolf or a pig?

Or both.

Image credit: Internet meme

During the dark ages of the 1970s, 80s and into the 90s people who refrained from drinking soda, living on fast food and cooked for themselves, instead of relying on the convenience of processed foods, were disparaged.

I know, because I was one of them. We were called “health food nuts.”

That changed with the advent of research into sugar, the value of veggies and a more general understanding that health wasn’t an accident, but a personal responsibility based on your own choices.

In the 1980s the World Wide Web became ubiquitous and existing bulletin board systems, such as AOL, migrated to the web. The dot com boom saw the birth and growth of social media communities that were free — and everybody loves free.

The contemporary internet was built on a bargain: Show us who you really are and the digital world will be free to search or share.

People detailed their interests and obsessions on Facebook and Google, generating a river of data that could be collected and harnessed for advertising. The companies became very rich. Users seemed happy. Privacy was deemed obsolete, like bloodletting and milkmen.

That bargain led to a new kind of nut.

“Privacy nuts;” I’m one of those, too.

As with health food nuts, privacy nuts were pooh-poohed as Luddites, anti-progressive, alarmist party-poopers.

But as they say, that was then and this is now.

Most people, no matter how they access their news, are aware of the stunning breaches in Facebook’s security, especially the current Cambridge Analytica fiasco.

That also seemed to wake people up to what the privacy nuts have been warning about all along.

Zuckerberg, of course, claims he supports the privacy law Congress is considering, but covertly Facebook is lobbying against it, so his statement that he would offer EU controls globally is highly unlikely.

Never forget that for Facebook it’s all about money.

The power of the company’s ad platform comes from the ability it gives politicians, brands, real estate agents, nonprofits and others to precisely target people on its social networks.

Of course, it’s not just Facebook.

And while Congress runs hearings and the public freaks out Zuck, as he is called, still seems to believe that it’s not Facebook’s fault and what happened should be excused because the his vision is for it to be a force for good.

but change is unlikely to happen, since greed still rules.

After two days of questioning by American lawmakers, Facebook’s share price rose more than 5%—mostly on the first day of Zuckerberg’s testimony—boosting the tech company’s market value by more than $24 billion.

Finally, NEWYORKMAG.COM provided commentary from people who are far closer to both Zukerberg and Facebook. The interviews are a real wakeup call (if you still need one).

A Propaganda Engine ‘Unlike Any in History’: Q&A With Early Facebook Investor

A conversation with early Facebook investor Roger McNamee on propaganda, early warning signs, and why outrage is so addictive.

• Former Facebook manager Sandy Parakilas on privacy, addiction, and why Facebook must “dramatically” change its business model.

• Former Facebook designer Soleio Cuervo on Facebook’s commitment to users, what the media gets wrong, and why regulation is unnecessary.

• Former Zuckerberg speechwriter Kate Losse on how the Facebook founder thinks and what is hardest for him to wrap his mind around.

• Former Facebook product manager Antonio Garcia Martinez on the “sociopathic scene” of Silicon Valley and Mark Zuckerberg’s “disingenuous and strange” reaction to the election.

Image credit: Marco Paköeningrat

Have you ever been to a post-holiday potluck? As the name implies, it’s held within two days of any holiday that involves food, with a capital F, such as Thanksgiving, Christmas and, of course, Easter. Our group has only three rules, the food must be leftovers, conversation must be interesting and phones must be turned off. They are always great parties, with amazing food, and Monday’s was no exception.

The unexpected happened when a few of them came down on me for a recent post terming Mark Zukerberg a hypocrite. They said that it wasn’t Facebook’s or Google’s fault a few bad actors were abusing the sites and causing problems. They went on to say that the companies were doing their best and that I should cut them some slack.

Rather than arguing my personal opinions I said I would provide some third party info that I couldn’t quote off the top of my head and then whoever was interested could get together and argue the subject over a bottle or two of wine.

I did ask them to think about one item that stuck in my mind.

How quickly would they provide the location and routine of their kids to the world at large and the perverts who inhabit it? That’s exactly what GPS-tagged photos do.

I thought the info would be of interest to other readers, so I’m sharing it here.

Facebook actively facilitates scammers.

The Berlin conference was hosted by an online forum called Stack That Money, but a newcomer could be forgiven for wondering if it was somehow sponsored by Facebook Inc. Saleswomen from the company held court onstage, introducing speakers and moderating panel discussions. After the show, Facebook representatives flew to Ibiza on a plane rented by Stack That Money to party with some of the top affiliates.

Granted anonymity, affiliates were happy to detail their tricks. They told me that Facebook had revolutionized scamming. The company built tools with its trove of user data (…) Affiliates hijacked them. Facebook’s targeting algorithm is so powerful, they said, they don’t need to identify suckers themselves—Facebook does it automatically. And they boasted that Russia’s dezinformatsiya agents were using tactics their community had pioneered.

Scraping Android.

Android owners were displeased to discover that Facebook had been scraping their text-message and phone-call metadata, in some cases for years, an operation hidden in the fine print of a user agreement clause until Ars Technica reported. Facebook was quick to defend the practice as entirely aboveboard—small comfort to those who are beginning to realize that, because Facebook is a free service, they and their data are by necessity the products.

I’m not just picking on Facebook, Amazon and Google are right there with it.

Digital eavesdropping

Amazon and Google, the leading sellers of such devices, say the assistants record and process audio only after users trigger them by pushing a button or uttering a phrase like “Hey, Alexa” or “O.K., Google.” But each company has filed patent applications, many of them still under consideration, that outline an array of possibilities for how devices like these could monitor more of what users say and do. That information could then be used to identify a person’s desires or interests, which could be mined for ads and product recommendations. (…) Facebook, in fact, had planned to unveil its new internet-connected home products at a developer conference in May, according to Bloomberg News, which reported that the company had scuttled that idea partly in response to the recent fallout.

Zukerberg’s ego knows no bounds.

Zuckerberg, positioning himself as the benevolent ruler of a state-like entity, counters that everything is going to be fine—because ultimately he controls Facebook.

There are dozens more, but you can use search as well as I.

What can you do?

Thank Firefox for a simple containerized solution to Facebook’s tracking (stalking) you while surfing.

Facebook is (supposedly) making it easier to manage your privacy settings.

There are additional things you can do.

How to delete Facebook, but save your content.

The bad news is that even if you are willing to spend the effort, you can’t really delete yourself from social media.

All this has caused a rupture in techdom.

I could go on almost forever, but if you’re interested you’ll have no trouble finding more.

Image credit: weisunc

From religious leaders to politicians; corporate titans to everyday folks; glitterati to moguls; intelligentsia to idiots; there seems to be no action that elicits societal condemnation, let alone punishment, for anyone except getting caught.

That’s right, getting caught.

If a societal no-no, first vehemently deny it and/or claim you didn’t realize anybody actually minded. If that doesn’t work, apologize profusely using language that changes the focus from what you did and who you hurt to you, i.e., how sad you are for them and how your big sister broke your GI Joe when you were a kid, so it’s not really your fault.

Another approach is to buy their silence, but if that doesn’t work, you can claim that the devil led you astray, you were weak, but you’ve preyed a lot, God forgave you and so should those you mislead/hurt.

Enterprise and Internet companies emote about how important user privacy is and how hard they try to protect it every time they’re hacked or their hands are caught in the cookie jar.

Worse, repercussions of serious criminal actions, especially murder, are relativity easy to avoid as long as you’re white and well-healed — or in law enforcement.

It used to be that people talked of someone having a “strong moral compass.” I suppose many still do, but that’s not worth much when “true north” is portable, shifting with the trends on social media and shoved around by rigid ideologies.

Image credit: Tim Cigelske