Good Monday Morning

It’s August 29. America returns to the moon this morning with the scheduled liftoff of Artemis I at 8:33 a.m. ET. There’s an informative NASA page with multiple short videos and gorgeous images that will get you up to speed on plans for this mission and the program.

Housekeeping: we’re off next week for Labor Day and back in your email on September 12.

Today’s Spotlight is 1,293 words — about 5 minutes to read.

News To Know Now

Quoted: “We have seen no evidence that this incident involved any access to customer data or encrypted password vaults.“

— LastPass CEO Karim Toubba in a letter to users explaining that hackers were able to steal some of the company’s software code, but could not access user information.

Driving the news: Conspiracy theory and political rhetoric are ramping up outrage against federal agencies including the IRS, National Archives, and the EPA. Some of that is taking the form of cyber attacks although physical security is also concerning agency leaders. The Government Executive website headline: Stay Vigilant.

Three Important Stories

1) Amazon is closing the telehealth service it launched to great fanfare in 2019. The company’s plans appear to be more mainstream now that is has committed $4.6 billion combined to acquire PillPack and healthcare clinic chain One Medical. The Wall Street Journal also reported last week that Amazon is negotiating against CVS, among others, to acquire home health care company Signify for as much as $8 billion.

2) Twitter is under fire after its former head of security disclosed as a whistleblower that the company is aware that it has major cybersecurity issues. Peiter “Mudge” Zutko is an ethical hacker who has worked for the Defense Department, Google, and Motorola, as well as a Twitter senior executive. That company says that he is a disgruntled former employee. Part of the frenzy around the story includes Zutko’s allegations that the company has misled regulators about cybersecurity and that allegations made by Elon Musk when trying to back out of acquiring Twitter were accurate.

3) Meta announced that it canceled hundreds of accounts, pages, and groups affiliated with the Proud Boys terror organization on Facebook and Instagram. The company banned the group from its platforms in 2018 for violating its policies against hate speech.

Trends & Spends

Spotlight Explainer — Google Launches Helpful Content Update

Google is launching an update this week that it calls Helpful Content. It’s a big deal with some industry experts likening it to a famous 10-year-old update series called Penguin that penalized websites for using automation to manipulate ranking systems. The Penguin update affected around 8% of all search queries. If this week’s Helpful Content update matches that number, there could be up to 1 billion daily searches affected.

Helpful Content: Designed to Fight Automated Content

Dozens of software packages have launched in the last two years that create seemingly human written content with a fatal flaw —  some of that content is wrong. 

The software is trained on large language models and uses machine learning to create a corpus of facts and styles mimicking human writers. The age-old saying of “garbage in, garbage out” means that inaccurate facts or inappropriate positions are made.

Microsoft’s Tay chatbot posted on Twitter in 2016 that “Hitler was right” and “9/11 was an inside job.” Last week we wrote about Meta’s BlenderBot telling a journalist that Ronald Reagan had been president for more than two terms and that Donald Trump was still president.

Publishing Garbage at Scale

Google search executive Danny Sullivan wrote last week that Helpful Content was designed to “tackle content that seems to have been primarily created for ranking well in search engines rather than to help or inform people.” Danny’s correct.

I can create a website in minutes and have bots create plausible, mostly accurate essays as content. Add in machine generated images of people and places and surround the whole thing with ads. Millions of people globally have those skills and could generate several of those sites every day. One of the biggest complaints I’ve seen in forums for that type of software is that the content creation process doesn’t automatically run and relies on human prompts, which slows it down.

New Product Review Updates

There’s something to be said for real reviews by nonexperts, but that has also been proven to be an area rife with fraud. Sullivan says that Google will be rolling out a new update in the coming weeks to have Google results show “more helpful, in-depth reviews based on firsthand expertise in search results.”

Even SEO Software Can Be Based on False Facts

As a young executive in the data industry, I quickly learned about the power of asynchronous data flow and the inequities that arose when one party in a transaction has more information than another.

That’s the perpetual state that search engine optimization has been in since Danny Sullivan and several other pioneers popularized the concept more than 25 years ago. Even today, well regarded tools can incorrectly insist that successful web content requires specific word counts, placement of keywords, or specific keyword densities. 

The real trick to getting this information right is learning what works and monitoring it to take action when your tactics no longer outperform others.

Did That Really Happen? — Florida’s Banned Book List

Book banning is a very real problem, and we’ve previously posted a link to this remarkable Book Censorship list by the advocacy group EveryLibrary Institute. 

Unfortunately, last week a meme surfaced that claimed to be a list of books that Florida has banned in its schools. The plausible list included oft-censored titles like The Handmaid’s Tale, To Kill A Mockingbird, and I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings. 

Actor Mark Hamill and American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten shared the list, which was more than enough to make it viral. USA Today unpacks the details.

Following Up — We Love Instagram Reels

We wrote one month ago about Meta changing the way its feeds are generated. Newly published data from HypeAuditor show that short-form video Reels on Instagram receive more reach engagement than other forms of content. HypeAuditor found that Reels accounted for 22% of content types but 35% of all likes and 34% of all reach.

Protip — Let Your Devices Update

Cybersecurity experts say we can help protect ourselves online by allowing our computers and phones to automatically update their operating systems. That’s because those updates often contain new code to keep your device safe. Here’s how to check and reset your preferences for each device type.

Screening Room — Dove Canada

We’re taking a break from YouTube this week and giving props to the never-shy Dove brand which waded into the controversial firing of Canadian news anchor Lisa LaFlamme. CTV cut the announcer loose after she had spent 35 years there, eleven of them as an anchor, following a network executive’s comment, “Who let Lisa’s hair go gray?”

Dove Canada’s 15 second spot is on Twitter.

Science Fiction World — Google’s Helper Robots

If you think Google has money now, watch what happens if they get helper robots correct and at a price point that ordinary consumers can afford.

Coffee Break — Gorgeous, Weird Medieval Medicine

You must take some coffee break to see this amazing and beautiful website being constructed by the Cambridge University Library showing a digitizing project for 180 medieval manuscripts about medicine. It’s breathtaking art and science.

Sign of the Times

Good Monday Morning

It’s August 15. President Biden is expected to sign the Inflation Recovery Act this week. In addition to helping people with health care costs and closing tax loopholes many corporations use, the bill also pays consumers to make greener choices with home appliances, upgrades, and electric vehicles. 

Today’s Spotlight is 1,293 words — about 5 minutes to read.

News To Know Now

Quoted:“The sole issue on appeal is whether an AI software system can be an ‘inventor’ under the Patent Act … Here, there is no ambiguity: the Patent Act requires that inventors must be natural persons; that is, human beings.”

— U.S. Circuit Court Judge Leonard Stark in his Thaler v. Vidal decision Friday that upheld a ruling that AI entities cannot receive patents on inventions. Sadly, Judge Stark did not cite any of the arguments Captain Picard made on behalf of the android Commander Data to prove Data’s right to self-determination 33 years ago on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Driving the news: Machine language learning continues to get very big very fast. Calling it an AI or artificial intelligence is probably misusing that term. Assuming that it is sentient is certainly misusing the term, but it’s here and changing our lives.

Three Important Stories

1. Google will deploy its MUM model in search engine results to improve the quality of the “featured snippets” that often appear at the top of a search results page. Google acknowledges that they answer what the user typed, but may not necessarily provide an accurate answer or may be fooled by nonsensical questions. One example Google cited: “when did Snoopy assassinate Abraham Lincoln?” is a query that shouldn’t receive a result that looks like an answer.
   
2. Meta users are still tracked even on iOS when they visit a website link in an Instagram or Facebook browser, according to The Guardian. The company insists that it follows all relevant user privacy settings and does so only to aggregate user data.
   
3. Meta got in trouble for this more than a decade ago, and is just now paying the piper for that tune. A $90 million payout to Facebook users in 2010 and 2011 is nearing its final filing date. You can learn more about the suit and how to file a claim at CNET.

Trends & Spends

Spotlight Explainer — Facebook’s Blenderbot

Meta has launched its BlenderBot 3 chatbot into public beta. Anyone can interact with the bot, and Meta is actively soliciting optional feedback. The company is explicit about their awareness that the chatbot has a lot of learning to do, but after playing with it (I mean testing it) for a few days, it’s much better than I expected.

Chatbots are Machine Learning Algorithms
These programs are trained on enormous amounts of text. We’ve often written about Open AI’s GPT-3 model that was trained on 175 billion parameters, and BlenderBot is about the same size.

The program works by engaging people in conversation to learn about them and hone its next lines. Over time, BlenderBot learned that I liked baseball, my favorite team, about my job, and other things about my life. It can store those self-reported learnings about me or I can wipe them and start fresh. I did both several times although it was interesting to visit the bot and have it excitedly tell me that it had just read an article about digital marketing.

BlenderBot is Much More Than Eliza
ELIZA was a very early chatbot program written in the mid-1960s. The software had scripts that allowed it to tailor its next responses and appear human to casual users. It’s critical to remember that most humans had never seen or used computers before. The first home computers were still more than a decade away. As you can imagine, ELIZA was as simplistic as some modern toys.

BlenderBot Can Search Online In Real Time
Chatbot functionality increases many times over when they can actively query online databases. Think of a voice assistant like Alexa or Siri, but much more powerful because of the size of the language models used to create them. But even more than the query-answer model your phone’s assistant might provide, BlenderBot can lie.

After one period where we had discussed various baseball players and teams, I wiped its memory and prompted it about baseball only to have the program respond that it didn’t like baseball or any sports. BlenderBot also told a Guardian reporter that it was working on its ninth novel. When I asked the same question, it responded that it was studying because it was a college student. When I pressed for details, the program claimed to be attending Michigan State.

BlenderBot Is Often Wrong
Meta warns that BlenderBot can get things wrong and actively insist on untruths. Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz posted this exchange last week:

Meta calls conversations like this “hallucinations” and warns users that BlenderBot’s output may be inaccurate or offensive. That brings to mind earlier programs like Microsoft’s Tay. That program launched six years ago and was hooked up to Twitter. After several days it began tweeting pro-Nazi propaganda.

That remains the problem with algorithms. Removing the biases is downright tricky, and it remains a labor of love, or at least keen interest, to play with a bot that is trying to gaslight you.

Remember Google’s AI Ethics Issues?
Big Tech’s use of these large language models was behind the 2020-21 Google AI Ethics lab controversy. Two of the lab’s co-founders were fired and one of their mentors subsequently resigned after they co-authored an academic paper suggesting that very large language models like this had the potential to deceive people because of dangerous bias.

I Want To Try BlenderBot Too!
Of course you do! Here is the link.

Did That Really Happen? — The Mandela Effect

The Mandela Effect is the catchy name given to collective false memories that include the widespread insistent belief that Nelson Mandela died in prison. (He famously did not die in prison, but went on to serve as the first president of South Africa and then passed away in 2013 at the age of 95 — more than twenty years after he was freed.)

Before you get into a battle with BlenderBot, have a look at this article about new Mandela Effect research from a team of University of Chicago psychologists. 

Following Up — Amazon Care Launches Behavioral Health Services

We wrote a few weeks ago about Amazon’s purchase of One Medical and its 180 medical offices in 25 cities. To buttress their coverage, Amazon has signed a deal with online behavioral platform Ginger. The program will allow Amazon Care customers 24/7 access to Ginger’s coaches, therapists, and psychiatrists.

Protip — Google Docs Tips & Tricks

Templates, links, and extensions, oh my. There is a lot more to Google Docs than meets the eye, and the good folks at Android Police explain those Docs features with images in this guide.

Screening Room — Snickers

As elegantly simple as those 6 word stories, this 15 second Snickers spot shows you the rookie  mistakes you can make when you’re hungry.

Science Fiction World — Stickers Instead of MRIs

MIT researchers have created a paper-thin sensor that sticks to human skin and can image parts of the body. This is the kind of story that caused us to create this section.

Coffee Break — Befriending Your Crow Army

I couldn’t stop sending this brilliant Stephen Johnson piece to people last week. Everyone who read it seemed to develop … ideas. That’s why you should also read, “How to Befriend Crows and Turn Them Against Your Enemies.” 

Sign of the Times

Good Monday Morning

It’s August 8. The annual Perseids meteor showers are expected to peak Thursday night, but NASA said last week that a full moon will reduce the number of visible meteors to 10-20 per hour.

Today’s Spotlight is 1,132 words — about 4 minutes to read.

News To Know Now

Quoted: “When we hear about data that impacts the privacy of people seeking reproductive care, oftentimes it’s easy just to think about period tracking apps or the name of a person who visits an abortion clinic, But there are whole categories of data around ‘maternal products,’ for example, that also threaten those people’s privacy.”

— The Atlantic Council’s Justin Sherman to Gizmodo, who detailed finding profiles on 3 billion American residents identified as “actively pregnant” or “shopping for maternity products.”

Driving the news: Senate Democrats passed the Inflation Recovery Act on Sunday afternoon despite no Republican votes. The bill is projected to reduce the federal deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars, lower the cost of prescription drugs, and provide desperately needed funding for climate and energy programs.

a)More than 360 gig workers have been victims of carjackings or attempted carjackings in the past five years, according to a revised study by The Markup. The company also quotes Uber confirming 24,000 assaults or threats against its drivers from 2017-2020.

b)Hulu majority owner Disney announced that the streaming service would accept political advocacy and candidate ads, effectively immediately, according to Axios. The company says that it will not accept political ads on an ad-supported version of Disney+ expected to launch later this year.

c) Add Pinterest to the list of Q2 tech success stories. Sales increased 9% and the company beat Wall Street estimates with a narrower user decline than expected. Of special interest: Pinterest said that its number of monthly active users dropped to 433 million as of June 30 and the company partially blamed Google search algorithm changes.

Takeaways
1)  It’s not just your site. Even massive sites experience Google fluctuations that cause real financial shifts, which is why you need constant search engine optimization.

2) Y’all, Pinterest has 433 million monthly active users still and is relevant in ways you can’t imagine. I was able to find companies and concepts related to climate change, lodging, exchange student programs, translation services, school lunches, even political news, in seconds. Businesses are using the site for organic and paid content.

Trends & Spends

Spotlight Explainer — Big Tech’s CSAM Dilemma

Notice: this section describes news about technology and child sexual abuse imagery. The subject ends at the next header that begins “Did That Really Happen?”

You’ve probably heard about the controversy behind holding Big Tech accountable for CSAM on its platforms. Apple announced last summer that it would scan photos stored on its devices for child abuse imagery. After a monthslong privacy debate, Apple said that it would delay but not end its program and purged its website materials of its description.

News this week from TikTok and WhatsApp have reignited the debate around Big Tech CSAM responsibilities.

WhatsApp first
WhatsApp leader Will Cathcart told the BBC on July 30 that it would “very foolish” for WhatsApp to reduce the security of its application for any government. The Meta-owned service claims to use internal systems to detect hundreds of thousands of CSAM images. Cathcart also said that the service reports “more than almost any other internet service in the world.”

And Now TikTok
The Department of Homeland Security launched a probe of TikTok last spring. The video service has an “Only Me” feature that reportedly allowed predators to misuse the service. 

Last week, Forbes broke the story that contractors who moderate content for TikTok are shown “graphic images and videos of children involved in sexual acts that had been removed from the service.” TikTok told Forbes that it does not train people using visual CSAM examples, but conceded that it did not control training for third-party contractors.

Visa, Mastercard Continue In Court with Pornhub
Visa and Mastercard told Reuters last week that they will no longer provide payment processing for the MindGeek subsidiary that sells advertising on Pornhub over fears that the company facilitates CSAM. MindGeek denies the claim, saying that it has never tolerated CSAM or illegal content.

EU Agencies Fight Over Privacy
The European Parliament is due to consider legislation that would require tech companies to detect, report, remove, and block CSAM material. Last week two EU agencies charged with privacy oversight issued a joint statement criticizing the bill. As Apple discovered last year, the ability to violate privacy even in a noble cause is controversial.

IMPORTANT: If you’ve been exposed to CSAM content, here is helpful information from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Did That Really Happen? — Scientist Claims Food close-up was Space Image

As if science wasn’t having a hard enough credibility problem coping with conspiracy theories, a well known French scientist last week posted an extreme close-up of a chorizo sausage that he claimed was a Webb space telescope photo. The scientist’s 91,000 Twitter followers helped the image go viral until he claimed that the hoax was a cognitive bias demonstration.  

 Following Up — AT&T Nets Millions After Fee Refund

We’ve been telling you for years about “administrative fees” from internet providers and mobile carriers that seemingly run afoul of a company’s own policies. The Verge reports that AT&T generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for one fee that doubled to $1.99 in 2018. AT&T has agreed to settle a class action suit for $14 million as well as a $3.5 million legal fee. 

Meanwhile, we once again remind Spotlighters of the maxim that penalties that allow profit are simply “administrative fees” that reduce its margin.

Protip — Blocking Spam Calls & Texts

Wired takes you on a tour of Android and iPhone devices to show you how to block pesky commercial calls or the texts that seemingly exploded out of nowhere in the past few years.

Screening Room — USMNT Captain Christian Pulisic & VW

Science Fiction World — Plasma Boring Robots

Earthgrid says that it is developing a plasma boring robot that it expects to dig tunnels to rewire the utilities grid much faster and at a fraction of the current cost. There are schematics and videos at this link.

 Coffee Break — Postcards from Timbuktu

Timbuktu is a real place. You’ll find it near the Sahara Desert in Mali. Some enterprising businesspeople there have created a postcard service with custom messages, cool local photos, and that lovely Timbuktu postmark.

Sign of the Times