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Social Media Platforms are not Public Utility Companies

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Definition of Public Utility

As you may have recently heard, Twitter and Facebook are in the news due to their recent grilling on Capitol Hill. What is interesting to me about this, regardless of how you feel about the companies and the services they provide, is that not being public utilities they are not susceptible to government regulation.

Rather, they are private companies who have Terms of Service (ToS) people agree to when signing up that state they can ban or remove any content or users they find don’t meet their community standards. This is the same idea that companies all across the U.S. embody when they say they can refuse service to anyone. This is their freedom as a company and has nothing to do with individual rights. You do not have any first amendment rights except for in the presence of GOVERNMENT censorship. It has nothing to do with privately owned spaces including social media platforms. The fact is, social media platforms are for-profit companies who make money when people post their own opinions to them and they make a LOT of money when those opinions are contentious. It is in their own best interest NOT to censor their users when their users are operating within their ToS.

Thus, none of this makes sense for Congress to step into. There are several legal precedents for the government staying out of media-related industry censorship, which is why entities like the MPAA, CCA (now defunct), and ESRB exist – all being industry self-regulating bodies.  That said, maybe it’s time social media platforms establish their own so there are standards and regulations across them and content can be rated rather than completely removed. This would certainly help people avoid content they didn’t want to see and could allow for space where more objectionable content could exist within its own bubble that people could venture into at their own risk.

What SHOULD be of concern is personal data privacy. But, we all know that isn’t going to get anywhere. Those of us who do work in this space have been touting the issue of data privacy for several years to no avail. I don’t see it becoming a priority any time soon.

GDPR, Blockchain, and Me

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I missed posting last month because a lot was happening! Of course, for everyone who is involved with technology and data at a global level, we have all been touched in some way by GDPR. I know my inbox was flooded with emails on the changes to everyone’s privacy policies and probably yours was, too. It’s worth a read to learn more about it and why it’s such a big deal and how it’s affecting businesses all over the world.

For me personally, May was a big month because I changed jobs after almost a decade at The Planet/SoftLayer + IBM where I had been a design lead for Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), IAM (identity and access management), and BSS (accounts) and then head of the Strategic Insights team for Public Cloud Research (covering all of Infrastructure as a Service and Platform as a Service). I moved from there to SAP Leonardo Services where I took the position of a Blockchain Design Consultant. This means I’ve been heads down learning all I can about Blockchain and my new company for the last 3 weeks.

Here’s where I have to have a sense of humor around these two seemingly unrelated subjects considering the paradox of Blockchain and GDPR.

To summarize the article, given the immutable state of data in a Blockchain, there is no way to update or delete it. In developer’s parlance, there is no way to perform the UD operations of basic CRUD. In fact, the entire acronym has been updated for blockchain to be CRAB (create, retrieve, append, burn). The problem is, does burn accommodate the “right to be forgotten” and “erasure of data” portions of GDPR? If personal data is in the Blockchain, then the answer is no.

That said, there is a workaround as discussed via creating a hash and a link in the Blockchain that refers back to PII (personally identifiable information) that is stored OUTSIDE of the Blockchain. This results in the PII data only being accessible through an encrypted hash and link to it provided in the Blockchain that can only be decrypted by those who have the key. To ensure the data hasn’t been tampered with, the data retrieved via the link would need to provide its own hash that can be compared with the hash in the blockchain. If the two match, the data has not been modified. This is GDPR compliant because all of the data off-chain can be deleted thus making the hash/link in the blockchain useless. However, the blockchain is then reduced to an access control mechanism to data that remains centrally owned and located rather than a decentralized encrypted transparent immutable replicated ledger of actual data that is owned by everyone.

This results in the following:

The goal of GPDR is to give citizens back the control of their personal data, whilst imposing strict rules on those hosting and processing this data, anywhere in the world. Also, one of the things GDPR states is that data should be erasable. Since throwing away your encryption keys is not the same as ‘erasure of data, GDPR prohibits us from storing personal data on a blockchain level. Thereby losing the ability to enhance control of your own personal data.

If you want to learn more about Blockchain, I recommend this handy product manager’s guide and this how blockchain works article.

As you can see, I may have sipped a bit of the Blockchain Kool-aid.

On top of all of those changes, I also finished a side hustle where I completely redesigned a billing system for a friend’s startup.

In the coming months, I’ll be posting more about Blockchain along with some Machine Learning, IoT, as well as other forms of AI from a user and design perspective along with my ever-present posts on the Internet, privacy, security, gaming, and social media. I imagine the various topics will merge at some point down the line. I’m excited to be here in the edge technologies space. It’s exactly what I told my circle of friends I wanted to work on at the turn of the year. Thank you to SAP for making that a reality.

You’ve been data-mined

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Yes, you, if you’re on the Internet in any capacity, you’ve been data-mined.  This is especially true if you participate on any social media platforms. While you might have known this already, now you can see it!

Facebook's data-mined categories on me
Facebook’s data-mined categories on me

Here is what Facebook thinks about me based on the data I have posted. Note, none of this data is data I have shared directly with them via any sort of survey or other personal research methodology.

This is all data that has been mined from my profile and posts I have made on the platform.

If you want to find this data out for yourself, log in to Facebook, go here and then expand the “Your Information” accordion heading. At the top you will see two navigation points, the second of which is titled “Your categories” and there you have it in all its glory.

While you’re there, take a moment to adjust your ad settings as well.

As I’ve said in several previous posts on Facebook, you pay for your access with your data. If you have children on Facebook, they do this with their data as well. Data is one of your most precious resources in this day and age. Do what you can to protect it or at least be vigilant about how it’s used and where.

Side note: Never in my life have I ever said anything or done anything with soccer. I have no idea where that came from!

On the latest Facebook Scandal

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Techcrunch has a great rundown on the most recent Facebook scandal. If you haven’t heard of Cambridge Analytica before now, please take the time to read the full piece. One of the most interesting points to come out of it is Facebook stating that it’s “open to regulation”. If you’re a reader of this blog, then you know that I’m very interested in government regulation around our information and data. I’ll be keeping tabs on that as the story continues.

As always, you can read my multiple blog posts on Facebook for a better understanding of what you give up when you provide the company your data. Bottom line, if you don’t want others having your data without your permission, don’t post it on the web.

Lootboxes in the news again

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Lootboxes are in the news again and this time it is U.S. Senator Hassan who is challenging the ESRB. As I predicted last month, the new WHO classification of Gaming Disorder is already starting to make the rounds as a fabulous scapegoat.

“We should be doing all that we can to protect our children and to inform parents about their options when it comes to these types of games,” she says.

This comes right on the heels of 4 bills introduced in Hawaii to regulate games that utilize lootboxes as a game mechanic.

The issue is that though most parents give a cursory glance to the ESRB rating, many fail to recognize when descriptors are used or what they mean. This is a finding straight out of my dissertation. That’s not to say the ESRB shouldn’t note that these games utilize this type of microtransaction, simply that they should do more to inform people as to what exactly it is and how it works.

My prediction is that if any of those bills in Hawaii pass, they’ll be repealed at the appellate court as all previous gaming legislation has been. If you want to know more about gaming legislation, I have a nearly 300-page dissertation I’d be happy to share with you. 😉

Attention grabbing headline here

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Two headlines recently made the news. The first was the World Health Organization’s consideration of adding “Gaming Disorder” to their International Classification of Diseases. The second was how our mobile devices are making us stupid. Both of these have more in common than you might think. What gaming has that makes it addictive is often utilized by the same dark patterns that power much of today’s social media interactions. Most notably, interactions that cause dopamine responses. The problem with these artificial (aka computer-mediated) interactions providing a dopamine release is that if you lack in-person interactions that are the biological basis for dopamine responses, you’ll turn to artificial ones to supplement them.

When artificial interactions work better, faster, and easier than organic ones at providing a dopamine high, they might induce a person to engage in an addictive relationship with the artificial interaction at the expense of an organic one. In layman’s terms, this may cause a person to have problems in their daily life due to their detrimental relationship with technology. For example, a person may forgo an in-person interaction to engage in an artificial one because they find the artificial one more compelling. These may start out as situations like skipping out on going to dinner with friends to instead engage in synthetic interactions but may escalate to neglecting essential responsibilities such as going to work or school.

The real question is, is the subject matter that induces the dopamine response to blame for the addictive relationship that is developed or is the environment where the person cannot find organic interactions that would produce such natural and beneficial reactions responsible for the resulting addiction of looking for them elsewhere? Careful consideration should be made here as people who are diagnosed with an addiction to a particular trigger are thus restricted from engaging with that trigger in the future. What would this mean in situations where grade-school students are diagnosed with gaming disorder and are thus unable to do their school work because their school utilizes game theory and electronics in much of their teaching? What happens when someone recklessly engages in social media and thus is forced to give it up, but must interact in a similar environment for their careers such as utilizing tools like Slack or office Intranets?

Questions for consideration:

Should the underlying cause of addiction not be of more concern than those places to which people look to supplement their natural human needs? What can be done as designers and researchers in these areas to bring possible addictive behaviors to the attention of the user before they go too far? Are businesses at risk of losing revenue by putting the customer’s behavior and mental, physical, emotional health first? Should they be responsible when a user becomes addicted? If so, to what end?

#luckywelivedhawaii

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Having lived in Hawaii for almost four years this article in the Washington Post on people leaving Hawaii hits home in multiple places.

This picture is one of the last I took, December of 2016, while we were living on the island of Oahu. It was a beautiful place to live and as the hashtag states, #luckywelivehawaii, we felt lucky indeed. But, that luck only went so far. Working in the technology industry as a remote worker for an off-island company (we had one office on the island that I never visited – it was mostly for transient workers going between the far east and the US) I was able to continue to work in my field. Had I not had my remote job, however, I would have never found work on the island.

I interviewed for a job before moving out there, hoping that I’d be a great fit coming from the mainland with all of my experience and expertise (which by the way you should never do – Hawaii has her own way of doing things and it should be appreciated). The problem was, though the cost of living was at least 3x what we were used to in Texas, they paid a 3rd of what I was making to do the same work. In all my time living on the island, I never saw another job available in my field. And yes, I did look.

What I found instead were other workers like me who worked for mainland offices, on mainland hours, from our tiny island in the middle of the Pacific. There weren’t many of us, but we did exist. Other technologists, I found in the tech startup community, mostly tried to develop opportunities that focused on capitalizing on the tourist market, because it was the only market.  Either that or they did like Hello Makana, a company that ships Hawaiian delicacies all over the world, and catered to the people who had left and wanted a reminder of home.

Still, others who were once the white-collar workers of the mainland fell so much in love with the island that they found a way to make it work by doing things like becoming bee-keepers, tour guides, or were a part of the service industry in jobs like bartending and masseuses.

What I will never forget is the disparity between the tourists, the rich who make money off the backs of the tourists, and then the natives who were either exploited for the tourists or forced to work menial jobs because that’s all there was available. In the worst cases, they were destitute or completely homeless. Of those who were able to afford homes, they did so because they had multiple extended family members or multiple families living under one roof. Those homes they could afford were dilapidated, old, and generally unkept due to the cost of doing so.

Now, this is in no way meant to be representative of every possible Hawaiian experience on the island, just a snapshot of what my experience was there and one that falls in line with what the article reports. The natives will always have a soft spot in my heart. During our time there we did our best to avoid most of the tourist trappings and instead sought out experiences of the beauty and the nature of the island that helped the islands in one way or another. That will always be my recommendation to anyone who visits. Skip the tv dinner version and find a way to support the local culture and community any way you can.

Would I have stayed had I been able to find equal work for equal pay? It’s a possibility. What was more important were the opportunities afforded to my children, not only as children but also as adults. While we had to leave the island, part of it will always live within us. My children are better for having experienced their early childhood there. And, though they may never remember it, I have a lot of photographic evidence to help them relive as much as possible.

Relevant links:
To read more about the cultural perspective of native islanders here is an interesting piece I recently came across from a cultural anthropologist.
Here is a perspective from native Hawaiians on their culture versus the culture that is sold to tourists.
Here is yet another cultural look.

 

Gambling for Loot

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Lootboxes are making the news. Ars Tech reports on how Belgium is calling them into question and how Chris Lee (state representative from Hawaii) calls them predatory. If you’re like me and have ever played Overwatch or Heroes of the Storm, you’re quite familiar with them as items you can win as you achieve levels within the game. The problem is you can also pay money for tokens that allow you to buy them. And, because they are randomized, some are considering this ‘pay to play for random odds’ a form of gambling. It will be interesting to see where this goes with the ESRB in the US as that is what my dissertation is on.

Microsoft is battling the Digital Divide

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One of the things that is near and dear to me that I do not talk about often and rarely see addressed in the news is the digital divide. The digital divide is the difference between those with ready access to the Internet and those without. Many of those affected by the digital divide are in rural parts of the United States. Microsoft is on a mission to help close that divide right here in the U.S. This is in contrast to many other companies who work on this in developing markets around the world.  This is important for many reasons from work, to education, to even medical care and has become even more evident in the wake of the recent political turmoil in the U.S. As NPR reports, “In 2017, not being online hurts your education, your job prospects, your civic engagement.”

I’m excited to see where this goes. Growing up in rural East Texas in the 90s, not only did I not have Internet, I didn’t even have a computer. With the advent of computing being more readily available, access to the Internet is one of the remaining few gaps in the digital divide.

Backdoors again?

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Boing-Boing on Theresa May and Internet privacy.

“Use deliberately compromised cryptography, that has a back door that only the “good guys” are supposed to have the keys to, and you have effectively no security. You might as well skywrite it as encrypt it with pre-broken, sabotaged encryption… Theresa May doesn’t understand technology very well, so she doesn’t actually know what she’s asking for. For Theresa May’s proposal to work, she will need to stop Britons from installing software that comes from software creators who are out of her jurisdiction… any politician caught spouting off about back doors is unfit for office anywhere but Hogwarts, which is also the only educational institution whose computer science department believes in ‘golden keys’ that only let the right sort of people break your encryption.”

Net Neutrality on the Defense Again

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Ars Technica reports on the latest Net Neutrality news:

“The US Federal Communications Commission voted 2-1 today to start the process of eliminating net neutrality rules and the classification of home and mobile Internet service providers as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act.

The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) proposes eliminating the Title II classification and seeks comment on what, if anything, should replace the current net neutrality rules. But Chairman Ajit Pai is making no promises about reinstating the two-year-old net neutrality rules that forbid ISPs from blocking or throttling lawful Internet content or prioritizing content in exchange for payment. Pai’s proposal argues that throttling websites and applications might somehow help Internet users.”

You can find the docket and add a filing against it here.

Global Ransomware Attack

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The New York Times reports that hackers using a “cyberweapon developed by the N.S.A” have conducted a large bold strike against targets all over the world.

“Governments, companies and security experts from China to Britain raced on Saturday to contain the fallout from an audacious global cyberattack amid fears that if they did not succeed, companies would lose their data unless they met ransom demands.

The global efforts came less than a day after malicious software, transmitted via email and stolen from the National Security Agency, targeted vulnerabilities in computer systems in almost 100 countries in one of the largest ransomware attacks on record.”

Faking them out

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The New York Times reports that the newly elected French President’s staff created fake accounts to mislead Russian Hackers.

“The National Security Agency in Washington picked up the signs. So did Emmanuel Macron’s bare-bones technology team. And mindful of what happened in the American presidential campaign, the team created dozens of false email accounts, complete with phony documents, to confuse the attackers.”

Tetris Therapy

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Ars Technica reports on research that tested the use of playing a game of Tetris to reduce addiction.

“The researchers again hypothesized that the game’s ability to seize visual and spatial processing in the brain is key to the health benefits. In this case, addiction and cravings are often driven by visual fantasies of having that drink, drug, or what-have-you, the authors explained.”

Biocomputers

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Science reports on how bioengineers have turned cells into biocomputers.

“Computer hardware is getting a softer side. A research team has come up with a way of genetically engineering the DNA of mammalian cells to carry out complex computations, in effect turning the cells into biocomputers. The group hasn’t put those modified cells to work in useful ways yet, but down the road researchers hope the new programming techniques will help improve everything from cancer therapy to on-demand tissues that can replace worn-out body parts.”

Intercepting Traveler’s Tweets

Intercepting Traveler’s Tweets

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“SOON, FOREIGN VISITORS to the United States will be expected to tell U.S. authorities about their social media accounts.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection wants to start collecting ‘information associated with your online presence’ from travelers from countries eligible for a visa waiver, including much of Europe and a handful of other countries. Earlier this summer, the agency proposed including a field on certain customs forms for ‘provider/platform’ and ‘social media identifier,’ making headlines in the international press. If approved by the Office of Management and Budget, the change could take effect as soon as December.

Privacy groups in recent weeks have pushed back against the idea, saying it could chill online expression and gives DHS and CBP overbroad authority to determine what kind of online activity constitutes a ‘risk to the United States’ or ‘nefarious activity.'”

As a cyber anthropologist who, at times, uses social media for research – I find this highly disturbing. Twitter is turning into /b where nothing anyone says can really be taken seriously these days. This is ill-conceived and lacks critical understanding of the platform and the culture surrounding it.

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