Good Monday morning. It’s July 27th. The leaders of Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Apple make a rare public appearance before a House Judiciary subcommittee about antitrust matters beginning Wednesday at noon. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is the world’s wealthiest person and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is the fourth. Joining them are Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and Apple CEO Tim Cook.

Today’s Spotlight is 1,569 words, about a 6 minute read.

1. News to Know Now

a. Facebook has agreed to pay each Illinois user between $200 and $400 to settle claims that it violated the state’s facial recognition law. The $650 million plan still needs Judge James Donato’s approval.  Donato previously rejected Facebook’s $550 million offer, saying, “That’s a lot. But the question is, is it really a lot?  That is a significant reduction from the $1,000 that the Illinois legislature set as the baseline.” (Recode)

b. Title insurance giant First American Financial is also in legal hot water according to new reporting by Krebs on Security. New York officials have charged the company for exposing millions of mortgage data records covering a sixteen year period. A hearing is set for October 26.

c. The U.S. Army has been accused of offering fake contests on video game streaming platform Twitch and has agreed to stop recruiting efforts there. It’s not the Army’s first foray into video gaming. They publish their own series of games called America’s Army. And don’t sleep on Twitch as a platform that attracts nearly 40 million monthly active users. (The Guardian)

d.  William Safire prepared a contingency speech for then-President Nixon if the first moonwalk had ended in tragedy. MIT’s Center for Advanced Virtuality has made a film of an AI-powered Nixon giving that speech. This growing availability of deepfake technology terrifies futurists. Here is the project’s trailer.

2. COVID-19 Online Resources and News

Great Trackers
Johns Hopkins — the gold standard
Florida data — Unofficial, but great data and presentation
Event Risk Assessment from Georgia Tech
School Reopening Plan Tracker from Johns Hopkins
NEW: College Crisis Initiative (Open or Hybrid) from Davidson College

Tech News

5 charts illustrating economic trends during the pandemic — CNBC
COVID-19 data collection offers benefits, poses hazards — Johns Hopkins
Expanded payment capability for more online SNAP purchases — Governing
No end to COVID-19 webcam shortage — BBC 
Pandemic purchases lead to record reports of unreceived goods — FTC

Some videoconferencing fun: Bored with video call bingo?  There is a new Chrome extension that turns your Google Meet video conference into a game of 1970s-era Space Invaders using the faces of your unsuspecting co-workers. Here’s the trailer for their extension and here’s the link to their extension. 

3. Search Engine Optimization News

Google Shopping continues improving its feature set and integrating it within search results.

The company’s latest moves are seen as a challenge for Amazon’s third-party sellers that are coping with new rules. After first announcing free product listings, Google has now enabled commission-free Buy on Google checkout via PayPal or Shopify, according to Search Engine Land. That means that visitors will be able to buy products directly from Google Shopping search results, which are just a click away from the main search results. 

Google Shopping is also making Amazon-like use of product feeds. In a follow-up SEL article, T-shirts were shown in Google’s main search results with data pulled from the product feed to show the type of material that was used. If you’re already using Google Shopping, you should be reading Ginny Marvin’s coverage. You should talk with us if you’re interested in starting to sell products on Google. Just press your reply key and let us know your thoughts.

Google is also helping future mortgage buyers by showing a mortgage explainer article and mortgage tools from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on related searches. The tools include mortgage calculators and rate tracking. 9 to 5 Google has details.

Google Guaranteed status that includes a green check mark in Google My Business listings, is available to more businesses. Local search expert Greg Sterling reports that businesses advertising locally can apply for the mark and “guaranteed” language for $50/month.

4. Also in the Spotlight — Political Bias Online

A majority of Americans think social media companies have too much influence in politics according to a new Pew study. Researchers say that Democratic and Republican supporters feel the same way, but the feeling is much more prevalent among Republican voters. 

In the spotlight: few acknowledge that political bias online works on them. And the time to have this discussion is now when tech company leaders are scheduled to appear before a House Judiciary subcommittee.

The companies are expected to testify that they’ve tried to protect users from inaccurate claims made by politicians and their supporters. Twitter and Facebook have labeled inaccurate statements the president has made, but there is no way to effectively police the content posted by one third of the humans on the planet without also putting everyone’s content through onerous filters, false positives, and long wait times for approval.

No single platform is to blame. Instagram has emerged as a news platform that equals Twitter’s popularity among news seekers, according to a twelve country study released earlier this month. And researchers at Northeastern University report that after accounting for ” the prevalence of hate speech and misinformation, they found no differences between comment moderation on right- and left-leaning videos” after studying more than 84,000 comments on YouTube. 

Months ago, the president’s reelection campaign preemptively purchased the advertising masthead area on YouTube for the days leading up to Election Day. The campaign has also purchased hundreds of Facebook ads that accuse Twitter of silencing the president.

As George Mason marketing professor Shaun Dakin showed me when I sent him an archive of the Facebook ad library database, the Trump campaign also used aggressive tactics in promoting the same ads via accounts owned by the president, the vice president, and then-campaign manager. Dakin challenged me to figure out what they were doing, and it took a yeoman’s effort by The New York Times several days later to figure it out.

We have no answers for you regarding political bias online and recommend you watch Eli Pariser’s short TED talk about filter bubbles. The premise is still sound even though the details have changed slightly. We also recommend reading the twelve page Northeastern study, “Bias Misperceived”, and checking out the rest of our Smartlinks.

Smartlinks
Beware online filter bubbles by Eli Pariser — TED
Bias Misperceived (PDF) — Northeastern University

Americans: Social Media Companies Have Too Much Power — Pew Research
Instagram on Pace to Overtake Twitter as News Source — eMarketer
Researchers Have Already Tested YouTube for Bias — Ars Technica
Roger Stone Removed from Instagram, Linked to Fake Accounts — CNN
Trump Ads Take Over YouTube’s Homepage on Election Day — Bloomberg
Trump: $325K on Facebook Ads featuring Parscale’s Page — NY Times

5. Following Up: Amazon Robots & Twitter Hackers

Those Twitter hackers who gained access to the personal accounts of famous people two weeks ago apparently also read some of their private messages. Twitter reported that the crooks accessed the direct messages of 36 well-known account holders and downloaded the archived data of eight other users who don’t have “verified accounts.”

We also told you almost one year ago about Amazon Scout, the company’s delivery robots that were first tested in suburban areas of Los Angeles and Seattle. Amazon announced last week that the test is broadening to suburban communities near Atlanta and Nashville.

6. Debugging: That Eagle Carrying the Shark

The video making the rounds last month of a big bird carrying a shark over a beach was the perfect metaphor for 2020.  Except it wasn’t a shark.  Or an eagle.

TrackingSharks.com has the scoop because of course they do.

7. ProTip: How to Tell You’ve Been Hacked

We mean really hacked, not the “someone on Facebook copied my profile picture and is using my name” stuff, but had an account taken over by someone.

Wired has a nice common sense explainer with tips.

8. Great Data: Google Search Trends by State…for a Decade… and Animated

Search engine logs are the most boring reading imaginable. Top Search on Google? Facebook.  Don’t snicker. Google came in at #5 overall on its own search engine. It’s the same in every search of every database regardless of size.

But the folks at V1 Analytics did something smart by grabbing the top trending search on Google in every state for every day of the last decade.

Groupthink creeps in sometimes when all fifty states have the same top trending search. That happened on February 4, 2011 for Adele the week before her second romp through the Grammy Awards when she won all four major trophies. And it happened again for two weeks when Game of Thrones’ first season ended.

See all the trends for all the states here.

Screening Room: A Burger King Christmas

10. Coffee Break: The Loneliest Wave

The Phillie Phanatic was at the ballpark this weekend to cheer on the ball club but it was awfully hard starting The Wave, as seen in this bite-sized video. 

It’s the highest form of flattery to have you read Spotlight. Thank you for starting your week here and please tell a friend that they can also get a free copy each week. This is the link that they need.

Good Monday morning. It’s July 20th. Workers around the world plan to walk off their jobs today in the Strike for Black Lives. Organizers ask workers to leave and for all people to kneel or pause for eight minutes and forty-six seconds of silence at noon local time.

Today’s Spotlight is 1,385 words, about a 5 minute read.

1. News to Know Now

a. Twitter was hacked the old fashioned way last week according to investigative reporting by Motherboard. Criminals were able to pay a Twitter employee to provide access to Twitter internal software that allowed them to change the email addresses associated with famous account holders. The crooks were then able to tweet out get rich quick schemes from verified accounts owned by Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and even corporate accounts at Uber and Amazon. There was no flashy or new technology, merely an employee who provided internal access to crooks. Read the rest of the story here.

b. Google’s Project Loon is now actively providing internet connectivity to Kenya. The project includes 35 balloons that are similar to floating cell towers with 200 times the reach. Quartz has more details here.

c. T-Mobile, fresh from acquiring tens of millions of former Sprint customers, announced that it would provide free software that blocks robocalls and spam texts. The company announced other changes like free identity theft protection, free telephone number changes each year, and scam shield software that replaces your outgoing phone number with a proxy (fake) number. Read their announcement here.

2. COVID-19 Online Resources and News

Great Trackers
Johns Hopkins — the gold standard
Florida data — Unofficial, but great data and presentation
NEW: Event Risk Assessment – from Georgia Tech
NEW: School Reopening Plan Tracker from Johns Hopkins

Tech News
Amazon Dash Cart to Allow Cashierless Checkout In Stores – TechCrunch
Facebook to Launch Section Debunking Coronavirus Myths – CNBC
Snap Out Of Doomscrolling – New York Times
Stuck in Lockdown Rut – Wired UK
Surveillance Company Palantir Signs NHS Contract in UK – TNW

CountryTime Has Whimsical (But Real) Bailout Program

Our favorite COVID-19 marketing this week comes from the folks at Kraft subsidiary County Time who announced “The Littlest Bailout” that will provide up to one thousand $100 awards to kids and parents who operate a lemonade stand. This promotion is so on brand that we think it should win awards even before award season. Check out their video below.

3. Search Engine Optimization News

Another COVID-19 change is coming to Google search results regarding business hours. You probably remember that Google encouraged businesses to update their listings on Google My Business to let searchers know if and when they’re open. With the pandemic reaching new heights and localities perhaps initiating lockdowns again, Google will now display the date when the business hours were last changed. Search Engine Journal put together the story from Twitter.

The auto retail industry usually doesn’t do well online, and search is no exception. Local search company Whitespark examined data in 200 top markets in North America and reported that most listings were sparse. Among their findings:

• One-third have not claimed their listing at all.
• More than 60% have never made a post on Google.
• More than 90% don’t have a free link for appointments
• And nearly 25% don’t even have a link to their website.
• Staying with our theme of availability, 13% don’t have any hours listed.

Please don’t be like these companies. We can help you set up this free Google program for your organization. You can write directly to me by clicking reply now.

4. Also in the Spotlight — Facebook Fact Checks Under Fire

Facebook fact checks are receiving new criticism from politicians and advocates. Last week, a group of four Democratic senators detailed their complaints in a letter to Facebook. They believe a loophole exists that allows opinion pieces to escape fact checks, including a widely publicized essay criticizing climate change studies.

Facebook fact checks have been under criticism since before the company’s botched handling of disinformation prior to the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, and things may not have improved much since then. Using a third party contractor force to provide fact checks, Facebook faces shortages of resources and delays. One analysis earlier this year showed that there were only seven people doing Facebook fact checks in all of Australia.

Critics such as journalist Judd Legum have attacked the choice of Facebook fact check companies, specifically citing Tucker Carlson-founded Daily Caller as a Facebook contractor. Legum published multiple examples online including the Daily Caller citing information as fake that accurately said President Donald Trump told rallygoers that the coronavirus was “a hoax.” 

Hyperpartisan sites masquerading as local news sites are compounding the disinformation crisis. Some are benign and show a slight left or right bias. Others are unapologetic partisans. The Nieman Lab at Harvard identified 450 sites funded by politicians, political operatives, and PACs that appear to be organized into twelve networks owned by five corporate entities. 

As Facebook relaunches its news initiative, these sites pose a serious issue for an underresourced part of the company with a large impact on national and global affairs.

Smartlinks

Australia Has 17 Million Facebook Users and Seven Facebook Fact Checkers — BuzzFeed
Hundreds of hyperpartisan sites are masquerading as local news (map) — Nieman Lab
Elizabeth Warren Wants Answers on Facebook Fact Checks Loophole — Recode
The Daily Caller uses status as Facebook fact-checker to boost Trump — Popular Info

5. Following Up: TurboTax and H & R Block Used “Unfair and Abusive Practices”

We’ve told you several times over the last year about growing discontent at the IRS and among consumer advocates regarding the free E-file Tax program’s administration at large for-profit companies including Intuit and H & R Block.

Now the New York Department of Financial Services found that the companies “undermined the [Free File] Program by creating and marketing their own ‘free’ products that directly competed with the Program, with the purpose of upselling customers to pay for their services.”

Read more at ProPublica, which broke the story and continues to provide great coverage.

6. Debugging: Sorry, Pepys Didn’t Write That

The meme marveling at serendipity claims that diarist Samuel Pepys wrote in 1665 that “the taverns are full of gadabouts making merry this eve. And though I may press my face against the window … a dram in exchange for the pox is an ill bargain indeed.”

Now, look, we’ve probably had similar literature reading lists in high school. We’ve slogged through Pepys, and we want some credit for doing that, darn it, so here’s a meme with some vintage looking guy and this quote.

Except he never wrote it. Here’s the Snopes story.

7. ProTip: 15 Best Mac Apps to Make Everyday Life Easier

Wired put together a nice list of free and inexpensive products to add to your Mac. Many are also available in Windows version so this is worth your time to check out. If you have Linux, I dunno, smarty-pants, go build your own apps.

Here’s the full list with links and descriptions. 

8. Great Data: One Million vs. One Billion

Nearly everyone has trouble conceptualizing one million of anything. Forget conceptualizing one billion by yourself. I often tell students or clients that one million seconds is equal to 12 days and that one billion seconds is about 32 years. 

See? It’s nearly impossible. 

YouTuber Tom Scott decided to try the visualization a different way. He starts by walking the distance that one million bills would take when horizontally stacked. Then he travels the distance for one billion bills. 

You won’t conceptualize better, but you’ll understand the scale better. Click below to watch.

Screening Room: Choptober at Lowes Foods

10. Coffee Break: Peacock’s Terms of Service

We told you last week about Peacock, the new streaming service from NBC. They’re following the whimsical rather than inspirational path too and embedded a cake recipe and an FAQ about peacock tails in their terms and conditions. 

Check out the screen shots on Twitter because we wouldn’t ask you to read the actual terms no matter how jokes are hidden in them.

Good Monday morning. It’s July 13th. The streaming wars get busier on Wednesday when NBC’s Peacock launches with free and paid versions. To stay on top of Netflix and Amazon streaming, sign up for Sue’s free Movie Rewind newsletter. 

Today’s Spotlight is 1,378 words, about a 5 minute read.

1. News to Know Now

a. The new California privacy regulations are now being enforced. For-profit entities that have any California customers are required to comply if their total annual revenue exceeds $25 million or if they buy, sell, or share data from 50,000 records (California individuals or devices). And yes, that’s why all the new and updated cookie notices.Talk with us if you need more info.

b. Uber’s $2.6 billion acquisition of food delivery rival Postmates is the second time that the U.S. food delivery market has shrunk in the last 30 days. Uber and Grub Hub were in talks until GH was acquired by Just Eat Takeaway, Europe’s biggest delivery company. Uber is also testing a new grocery delivery service in several countries including Brazil and Canada. In an even more direct threat to Amazon, Walmart announced that it will offer a Prime-like membership program that offers similar pricing and includes grocery delivery.

c. Facebook’s civil rights auditors criticized the company’s performance in a widely-published report. Among the biggest issues was the lack of an infrastructure to specifically address civil rights issues as well as the company’s decision to leave in place multiple posts by President Donald Trump that encouraged voter suppression and that included hate speech and threats of violence. Some issues, such as new advertiser blocks on using race to advertise for credit, jobs, or housing were credited as new successes. You can read the whole report here.

2. COVID-19 Online Resources and News

Great Trackers
Johns Hopkins — the gold standard
Florida data — Unofficial, but great data and presentation

NEW:  COVID-19 Exit Strategy – non partisan tracking of state progress
NEW: COVID Risk Levels – county-level map from Harvard

Tech News

Anti-mask Facebook Groups Rife with Dangerous Misinformation – MMFA
Five Google Trends Charts Showing COVID-19 Impact – Search Engine Watch
Many Americans See Exaggeration, Conspiracy in COVID-19 News – Pew
U.S. Interest in Coronavirus Waning – Statista

Heads-up, Teachers, Doctors, and Nurses:  Here is a Lifehacker piece published Friday explaining how to cut 25% from your AT&T Wireless bill. Those professions were added to a discount program AT&T already offers to first responders, military members, and veterans.

3. Search Engine Optimization News

You are going to hear the phrase “Web Vitals” a lot over the next year as marketers focus on what Google now says are “essential metrics for a healthy site.” The grouping and placement within the Google Search Console are a new flashing neon sign that Google will be focusing more on user experience. That’s previously been defined as mobile accessibility and website speed.

The definition includes whether the display “shifts” as items are loaded and two speed metrics calculated when a page first appears and the time at which visitors can interact with the page. 

The times are blazing fast. Google says that a good load speed is 2.5 seconds and that a website needs improvement at more than 4 seconds. The time to interact with a site or not have it shift is measured in tenth of a second increments. At 0.3 seconds, a website’s performance is considered poor for the latter two metrics.

Google just published a beta version of a new WordPress plugin called “Visual Stories” that allows websites to create very fast social media-like stories on their website. (Techspeak explanation: tappable stories using AMP. Use video at 24 fps or horizontal images at 828×1792. You can download the plugin at GitHub and send your creatives to get story building tools at this AMP page.)

Google also announced that the Shopping tab pages in search results will now consist primarily of free listings instead of the paid-only listings that replaced the original free listings back in 2012. We can help retailers get their products listed there and optimized so that you can compete against national giants.

There are also great new predictive analytics tools that Google is making available free within Google Analytics. We’ve been upgrading and testing the new models available and will publish the results soon.

Remember: search success in 2020 is not about ranking. Success is how many times people interested in your product or service are influenced to visit your website via search. 

4. Also in the Spotlight — Facebook Shuts Boogaloo Groups

You may have heard of the far-right boogaloo groups that take their name from a nearly forty year old break dancing movie and sometimes wear goofy Hawaiian shirts while carrying guns.

The group isn’t funny or nice. The Southern Poverty Law Center traces the movement back to 2012 and describes them as a subculture within the antigovernment Patriot movement. Like the so-called anti-fascist movement, there is no central organization or movement leader. 

The SPLC traces the arrests of at least seven adherents for weapons and conspiracy charges in Nevada, Texas, Colorado, and Ohio to the movement. Online groups in Virginia and Michigan called for members to rally around President Donald Trump’s message to liberate those states and Minnesota. Several weeks after the most recent post by SPLC, Facebook acted and removed hundreds of individual accounts, pages, and groups that were found to be espousing the movement’s calls for Civil War that are rooted in far right extremism and white nationalism.

Smartlinks

The Boogaloo Started as a Racist Meme — SPLC Hatewatch
‘Boogaloo’ Believers Think a Civil War Is Coming — The Trace and The Informant (both newsletters are excellent labors of love)
Facebook Removes Hundreds for Promoting Violence — The Washington Post

5. Following Up: Amazon Third Party Sellers Must Disclose Name & Address

We’ve written about how items “sold and shipped from Amazon” may not adhere to the company’s own policies for sale such as pill presses that can counterfeit drugs and weapons accessories.

The company informed third party sellers last week that they will be required to disclose their business name and address on their Amazon profiles in the future.

CNBC has the story here.

6. Debugging:  “E-Verify’s SSNLock is Nothing of the Sort”

We view Brian Krebs as the best security journalist working today. In this must-read article, he eviscerates the Department of Homeland Security’s my-Everify website. Along the way, he explains a bit about credit freeze limitations and knowledge based authentication (what’s your mother’s maiden name-style questions).

Read along with his journey. It’s a fast, informative story.

7. ProTip: 5 Zoom Tools

You might know that you can press-and-hold your space bar to temporarily talk with a muted mic during a Zoom conference, but did you know that you could make annotations on someone else’s document or how to queue external callers in a waiting room?

This Fast Company article will improve your Zoom game.

8. Great Data: People’s Choice Paths

Montgomery County, Maryland, officials say that they want to help improve public safety by focusing on the way people actually travel on foot. 

Their description:  We’ve all seen and used pathways in our travels that are not sidewalks, are not trails, and may not even be official. Called “People’s Choice” paths, “desire lines”, “goat trails”, and many other names, these shortcuts help pedestrians get where we need to go as directly as possible.

To get the story straight from residents, they’ve built a web portal using maps and are asking for information about walking shortcuts people use to be drawn on those maps.

It’s brilliant. Have a look here.

Screening Room: Applebee’s Taps Nostalgia

10. Coffee Break: Sydmar Lodge Care Home & Classic Rock Albums

A nursing home near London has been on lockdown for four months. Their residents and caregivers have handled the isolation well and recreated a baker’s dozen famous album covers from acts like The Clash, Elvis, Madonna, and Taylor Swift. 

They’re here. I love them all.