New FTC guidelines on advertising affects bloggers

The U.S. Fair Trade Commission has recently released new rules on advertising that appears in the form of endorsements and testimonials. This is one of those "the times they are a changing" moments given that these guidelines were last updated in 1980, my how the world has changed since then. There are many ways endorsements & testimonials show up which aren't so clearly ethical and the new technologies being developed offer new ways for us to communicate with each other. If the FTC were to remain limited by the old rules written before the Web was invented how would the FTC be able to regulate this new medium?

Let's think a moment about bloggers and endorsements.

Obviously some bloggers spend their blogging time writing about products and either tracking product press releases or doing reviews about products. There's nothing new about that and many magazines revolve around a similar vein of writing.

For decades there has been concern about slanted magazine reviews. That's why the original FTC guidelines came into being, right?

If the principle is "Caveat Emptor" it is up to the customer to decide whether or not to believe a given product review, right? But if payments or freebies provided by the manufacturer are not disclosed then how is the customer to know whether to take the review with a grain of salt? Requiring the reviewer to disclose stuff provided by the manufacturer makes for transparency.

For bloggers the FTC press release has this to say:

The revised Guides also add new examples to illustrate the long standing principle that “material connections” (sometimes payments or free products) between advertisers and endorsers – connections that consumers would not expect – must be disclosed. These examples address what constitutes an endorsement when the message is conveyed by bloggers or other “word-of-mouth” marketers. The revised Guides specify that while decisions will be reached on a case-by-case basis, the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement. Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service. Likewise, if a company refers in an advertisement to the findings of a research organization that conducted research sponsored by the company, the advertisement must disclose the connection between the advertiser and the research organization. And a paid endorsement – like any other advertisement – is deceptive if it makes false or misleading claims.

Some examples about online payola:-

Belkin’s Online Review Payola Plot Thickens: "A Belkin employee was recently busted offering payment for positive reviews of a Belkin network router—whether or not the reviewer had even seen one"

NBC Analyst Admits Receiving Tech Payola: About a 2005 "payola scheme by NBC tech analyst Cory Greenberg surfaced Wednesday, in which he was receiving upwards of $15,000 a piece from technology companies to positively promote their products on NBC's Today Show."

Links: 

FTC to bloggers: Fess up or pay up

Links: 

FTC Publishes Final Guides Governing Endorsements, Testimonials

Links: 

FTC Plans to Monitor ‘Blogger Payola’

Links: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola

"I want to opt out of Google's Sattelite View"

The other night a friend said that. She wants to be in her back yard in any state of (un-)dress and not worry about peeping googlebots in the sky or for that matter the neighbors. It's clearly an invasion of expected privacy when satellite services take pictures of every square inch of the planet. So let's ponder this for a moment..

The times, they are a changing.. eh? New advances of technology come routinely enough. Some of them dramatically challenge the preconceived notions we have. For example cell phones have made it routine to talk to apparently no-one whereas in earlier times we'd have thought someone nuts if they were carrying on a conversation with the air around them.

Taking pictures from satellites has been going on for decades and has only been getting better and better. What's new here is that Google and other services have made the images available on a massive scale to everybody. That's all.

There's an interesting principle about the right to photograph things. As I understand it (in the U.S.) the right to photograph is that if you are able to stand on public property and see something then you have the right to photograph it. In essence I think satellite imagery is taking that to an extreme. Satellites are clearly on public property (outer space) and they are taking pictures of things people could plausibly see if they were in outer space. That isn't too much of a stretch is it?

At issue isn't just satellite imagery, there is also airplane based imagery. In a few years we can expect unmanned air vehicles to be approved for use in the U.S. and perhaps there will be services flying UAV's around the country for the same purpose that satellites are used today.

Which isn't to say that my friend isn't out of line. She is having a very perfectly normal reaction. While I share her concern I'm simply being a realist about it. Technology has created this airborne photography service which serves many purposes and one of them is a massive invasion of privacy.

References: 

Is maps.google.com invading your privacy?

Internet means Freedom? Or more Tyranny?

For a long time many have claimed that the growth of the Internet will mean that the proletariat can shake off the chains of tyranny and gain freedom. But is that true? Clearly there are examples where the Internet and the Web have played a significant part in the people circumventing official media dominance to learn things tyrannical governments would rather not be known. Clearly that can lead to more freedom and perhaps the ability of the proletariat to actually revolt against their tyrannical governments. But is this always the case?

Evgeny Morozov: How the Net aids dictatorships goes into this.. so ...

He's got some good points.. that it's up to the people using the Internet to use it in a given way. Just because the creator of a thing wants it used one way doesn't mean the users will do so, they may have some other use for the thing than the intended purpose. Also the powers that be have an ability to be inventive about ways of using the Internet to gather open source intelligence, or to engage with their critics in a way that defuses the criticisms.

I think at the basic fundamental level for a society to successfully revolt against a tyrannical government, the society has to take the step of kicking the bums out. That means an actual revolution, fighting in the street, etc. It won't happen automatically once we all have a blog and can post our thoughts for everybody else to read.

An example is -- if Television is the Opiate of the Masses -- World of Warcraft and other addictive Internet experiences are doubly so. In China for example World of Warcraft and other online games are so widespread that they've identified "Internet Addiction" as a disease and have treatment centers for it.

Someone on the Internet playing games is not a threat to the tyranny of the regime, just as television addicts are also not a threat to the tyranny.

Traffic mapping for more efficient cities

While looking at A look at the Waze crowdsourced traffic mapping service turned up some other services with similar purposes. Let's take a look at a few of them.

As mentioned in the prior article Google Maps has traffic conditions reported on their maps. However this is only available for major highways, and only in selected cities.

The Maryland Department of Transportation publishes a list of highways and traffic speeds, traffic incidents, live traffic cameras for several roads, and more. The data is part of their CHART system (Coordinated Highways Action Response Team).

Clearly governments have an incentive to collect traffic information for their own needs and have the access to embed sensor devices in roads. That data can be provided to the public and there are many interested in open government, and specifically opening the data collected by government agencies for the benefit of all citizens. However there doesn't appear to be a comprehensive list of the API and data provided by governments.

Current City is a project of the Senseable City Laboratory MIT and several European researchers. They are working on applications covering these questions. They're leveraging the data collected by cell phone carriers and notice they are servicing other questions than simply traffic conditions.

• How many people are there in that area? (crowd management)
• Where is traffic piling up? (mobility analysis and forecasting)
• What percentage of people has left that area? (evacuation support, event management)
• What is the current demand for public transportation? (public transport management)
• How many people will look at that billboard?( marketing and city advertisement)
• What is the pattern of inflow and outflow of people from the city? (urban planning)
• What’s the hottest spot in town right now? (entertainment)

Another Senseable City Laboratory project is the Copenhagen Wheel. The project aims to transform bicycle use in Denmark’s largest city through promoting urban sustainability and building new connections between the city’s cyclists. The components of the system are an electric bicycle hub motor (converts the bicycle into an electric bicycle) along with a telemetry device reporting bicycle rider activity to a central computer system.

References: 

SENSEable City Project

References: 

MIT Bringing Smart Biking Project to Copenhagen; Prototype Hybrid Bicycle

Doubleplusungood, Amazon reaches out to delete 1984

In a curious ironic twist of history, Amazon's Kindle service has autodeleted copies of the book 1984 from all Kindle's whose owner had "bought" the book. What happened is that for some reason the publisher of both 1984 and Animal Farm (also deleted) made a decision that they no longer wanted those books available on the Kindle platform. As a result Amazon sent out the order to delete copies of those books which had already been purchased, resulting in commands sent to Kindle devices to remove already purchased books. At least they also issued refunds.

The irony here is that in the book, 1984, Big Brother would cause embarrassing news articles to be deleted in the memory hole. By remotely deleting 1984 and Animal Farm Amazon has shown us the Kindle also has a memory hole feature.

Apparently this is causing a bit of a ruckus in certain corners of the Blogosphere, and rightly so. It's not so much the specific instance of deletion but instead that the capability exists in the first place. For that matter, according to a NY Times article, this isn't the first time purchased books have been deleted from the Kindle.

The real concern is about centralized control of society's knowledge. Ironically, that was the subject 1984 warned us about.

The Kindle relies on Internet based cloud services to provide a service through which we can access society's knowledge in the form of books, magazines, newspapers and blogs. The Kindle service allows you to buy books or newspaper subscriptions, which are then delivered electronically to your device. It seems like a very sleek and nice service.

This event shows that Amazon can do more with "your" Kindle than simply deliver content to you. They can send commands to change things in all (or selected) Kindle's. Today it is deletion but clearly their service could potentially do other other things. The content we're talking about is digital and can be easily changed.

As I wrote in an earlier posting:

Suppose all of human knowledge is stored in digitized form on "The Internet". Suppose it's "easy" for a select group of people to control the content of the books and other records that is the record of human knowledge. And, remember that media ownership is consolidating to an ever-smaller circle of companies and that media companies are routinely clamoring to extend the length copyrights are valid, and to extend the powers they hold under copyright law. That's the danger proposed in the book 1984, that the definition of truth contained in those books and other media, if it can be changed repeatedly at whim then society can no longer know what is the truth and can more easily be led astray.

To be fair to Amazon, they do not own the content they're providing. It is the copyright holders who own the content. Amazon is simply providing a delivery service on behalf of the content owners. In this case a content owner wanted the content to be deleted, but suppose some other content owner wants the content to be changed.

The NY Times article makes out several interesting points. Amazon's current service agreement does not give Amazon the right to delete content, instead Amazon grants customers the right to keep a "permanent copy of the applicable digital content." Further retailers of physical goods do not have the right (or ability) to force themselves into homes to change or delete purchases. But Amazon has proved they do have the ability to force themselves into "your" Kindle and do things regardless of the actual rights they may or may not have to do so.

Doubleplusungood: That Copy Of 1984 On Your Kindle Is Now Gone

Amazon Erases Orwell Books From Kindle

Big Brother: Amazon Remotely Deletes 1984 From Kindles

Some E-Books Are More Equal Than Others

Amazon vanishes 1984 from citizen Kindles

Amazon Says It Will Stop Deleting Kindle Books

Pondering buying a Kindle

The value of shareholder proxy votes

Today I received a proxy vote solicitation. Since I own many different stock investments I routinely get these and put them almost immediately in the recycling. The proxy votes usually seem futile. Typically they only allow you to vote on a slate of board members and maybe one or two other things like compensation packages or increasing the number of shares or other equally uninspiring questions to vote on. This time I had the idea to take a look, expecting a similar slate of uninspiring propositions and a slate of old white guys in pin striped suits slated to be the next board of directors. This time I was pleasantly surprised to see their recommendation to vote against a measure which would restrict their ability to invest in companies which commit or engage in genocide or crimes against humanity.

Woah, am I glad I looked at this so that I can vote for this measure.

I would prefer that the proxy voting actually made a difference. Supposedly we shareholders are the owners of the company, but we have very little say over the conduct of the companies we own. As I said, the typical proxy vote gives very little room for valuable input. You can vote on board of directors members, but they all seem clones of one another so it seems unimportant which name is actually on the board or not. You can vote on other relatively meaningless proposals. You can't vote on important matters such as the products made by the company, the materials used, ecologically sensitive practices, the disposition of lobbying funds, the nonsensical status of corporations as persons, the award of spouse benefits for same sex domestic partners, etc, etc, etc.

Well maybe we could vote on important issues if only we knew how to get those issues on the ballot. But unlike government elections it is a complete mystery how one gets a measure onto the next proxy vote solicitation, and whether the company will abide by the measure if it passes.

Another question is how the heck do you get onto the list of candidates for board members? Is it completely controlled by a circle of cronies who only select future board members from the circle of cronies? Or is there a way to nominate yourself, and run an open campaign for election to the board?

Supposedly the U.S.A. and certain other modern countries are democratically ruled. Well, government has similar cronyism problems too. But the increasing power of corporations make even the most democratically minded governments powerless. Corporations are run nondemocratically. The employees of a corporation live within what's essentially a dictatorship ruled over by the CEO and management. The actions of corporations have huge impact that are only barely regulated by the government. This leaves the people, the citizens of the country, unable to have democratic influence over the behavior of the corporations.

Bleah.

Tolerance rather than hate, loving thy enemies as thyself

Normally I write about technology but the recent murder of Dr. Tiller is on my mind. Since I don't own or watch TV, I get secondhand the things said by various TV news hosts such as Bill O'Reilly. Repeatedly I see them quoted saying the most outlandish hateful untolerant things about specific people. In Why is Tiller's alleged killer doing press conferences? O'Reilly calls Dr. Tiller "Tiller the Killer" and expresses a hope to kill Dr. Tiller. Are those news hosts the primary source of the hatred spewed at people like Dr. Tiller? I think not as the hatred comes from religiously minded hard-liners. People like O'Reilly simply are using controversies for self promotion. I think that instead what we have are religiously minded hard-liners forgetting the teachings of the book and leaders they look to for teaching. Further, there are religiously minded hard-liners of all religions spewing hatred clothed in spiritual teachings, and leading their followers to commit violence in the name of spiritual teachings which universally talk of love, tolerance, acceptance, not violence and hatred.

How can it be that some followers of Jesus see it as being commanded by God that they should spew hatred and murder, that they should pass judgment, etc?

The teaching of Jesus was simple, Love. Love your neighbor, love everything, love, love, love.
Is it love to say hateful things about another, to wish for their murder, and to do so in front of an audience of thousands or millions? Is it love to say hateful things meant to incite violence against another?

The hate talk ascribed to Bill O'Reilly above is really a hallmark of the "Right Wing". There are many hard-liners who spew hatred for anybody who dares live outside their narrowly defined bounds of acceptability. Joan Walsh goes over some of them while asking Can right-wing hate talk lead to murder? Some of the right wing hatred is being aimed at Barak Obama today but they have had other targets at other times. It seems to be a pattern that they focus this hatred on specific people, painting them with rhetoric hoping that some of it sticks.

As another example, How Antisemitic Conspiracy Theories and Fearmongering Led to the Holocaust Memorial Shooting is about a different act of violence by a homegrown domestic terrorist. A man went on a shooting spree at the Holocaust Memorial, and this man was deeply steeped in conspiracy theorizing and had written several books filled with hateful obsession. This article goes on to an excellent description of the behavior patterns here.

Demagogues and conspiracy theorists use the same four “tools of fear." These are 1) dualism; 2) scapegoating; 3) demonization; and 4) apocalyptic aggression. The tools of fear are a connected constellation of frames, narratives, and processes used by demagogues to mobilize resentment and undermine the democratic process.
The basic dynamics remain the same no matter the ideological leanings of the demonizers or the identity of their targets. Meanwhile, our ability to resolve disputes through civic debate and compromise is hobbled. It is the combination of demagogic demonization and widespread scapegoating that is so dangerous. In such circumstances, angry allegations can quickly turn into apocalyptic aggression and violence targeting scapegoated groups like Jews or immigrants.

Note that none the "tools of fear" are about love and acceptance such as taught by Jesus. That is, fear and hate are the opposite of love and acceptance, hence any "tools of fear" would be opposite the teachings of Jesus. Yet many of the homegrown U.S. terrorists claim Jesus as their teacher.

As another example, Right-Wing Violence Will Continue, And Fox News Will Have to Answer For It points to the long running pattern of non-acceptance and hate speech being pushed by some news hosts, by some religious figures, by some political leaders, etc.

We have a pattern in this country of non-acceptance clothed in religious teachings that is eating a hole in the fabric of the country. The political rhetoric, for example, shows gaping divisions in the U.S.A. Divisions which need not exist, especially if those supposedly following the teachings of Jesus were to practice love and acceptance.

A couple years ago I wrote about the abuse of religious teachings Establishing control over a society. What I said then seems more true than ever. We have political, religious and entertainment "leaders" abusing the teachings of Jesus, promoting hate and fear, inciting followers to commit violence.