NEWSLETTER #122 / JULY 22, 2018
No Images? Click here
EVEN ORWELL WOULD BE SHOCKED
"Welcome to a world even Orwell could not have imagined" concludes an article in Forbes this week about the mounting dangers of adtech, surveillance marketing, and in particular, privacy abuse as practiced by Facebook.
The article describes how Facebook's algorithms currently identify and label people in ways that can be dangerous to them -- for example as potentially treasonous or as homosexuals or with other designations that may be dangerous or illegal in certain countries.
Let's not forget that in some countries homosexuality is a capital crime. Identifying people on these types of characteristics for the purpose of advertising is not just possible on Facebook, it is the essence of their "value proposition."
"What happens when governments begin using these labels to surveil, harass, detain and even execute their citizens based on the labels" the article asks? "...There are many governments across the world that are very much aware of the potential of Facebook’s advertising tools for surveillance and indeed use them actively..."
In BadMen I described how tracking-based advertising had gone from "a minor annoyance to a major menace." The dangers of surveillance marketing and adtech are growing every day.
Redefining Clueless
You can shock an Orwell but you can't shock a nitwit.
In an act of alarming cluelessness this week the ANA (Association of National Advertisers) sent a letter to the Department of Commerce warning against "privacy overregulation."
"...laws like the GDPR will limit competition, overburden consumers with opt-in notices and make an efficient and effective digital economy harder to maintain..." says the ANA.
The "leaders" of the advertising industry continue to be on the wrong side of every issue. When will someone in a position of leadership in our industry with some brains and some balls break rank with these fools and stand up for what's right?
Who Cheats More? Democrats Or Republicans?
Ashley Madison is a website for people looking to commit adultery. Yeah, there's an app for that.
In 2015 Ashley Madison was hacked and millions of records were released. Researchers at UCLA and Stony Brook have done an analysis matching voting records with credit card use on Ashley Madison and have concluded that Republicans have more fun.
According to The Guardian, the study found "Democrats used the Ashley Madison adultery website substantially less than Republicans." And what political group used the website the most? Libertarians.
And BTW, I have absolutely no doubt which of today's links will get the most hits.
1 Trillion Social Media Posts
In other frightening news, a Boston company called Crimson Hexagon (has there ever been a more sinister name?) has an app that pulls social media data from Facebook and Twitter. According to The Wall Street Journal, Crimson Hexagon "has in recent years had contracts to analyze public Facebook data for clients including a Russian nonprofit with ties to the Kremlin and multiple U.S. government agencies."
As usual, Facebook says it knew nothing about this. They seem to be very adept at knowing nothing about nothing.
Crimson Hexagon claims that it has in its archives one trillion social media posts. Can't imagine how that can go bad.
Fake Social Media "Exploding"
Contrary to the horseshit coming out of the social media PR machine, a study by Oxford University says that the use of crooked social media strategies to influence politics is exploding across the globe.
According to one of the authors of the study, “Disinformation during elections is the new normal...In democracies around the world, more and more political parties are using social media to spread junk information and propaganda to voters." Some data:
- The number of countries in which bots were used to generate and amplify social media political horseshit increased from 17 to 38 last year.
- "In China, 300,000 to 2 million people were used in 2017 as 'cyber troops' " to create and spread propaganda over social media channels.
- In Azerbaijan, Iran, Ukraine and Vietnam at least 10,000 people were used for similar purposes
Meanwhile, here in the U.S. the effort by foreign governments and other cyber-creeps to undermine the integrity of our elections "continues to grow," says the U.S. Department of Justice.
