"Images can't be verified": The limits of social media?

In previous posts, I have illustrated how information integrity concepts, and assurance more broadly, have played a role in media reporting. In the post, I noted the following as way way to act as a check on the media:

"Another probably more plausible approach is to leverage crowd sourcing and organize it to enable people comment or blow the whistle on information that is produced in a manner that is inaccurate, incomplete or invalid. The Guardian actually did this for the MPs expenses: they built an app that allowed ordinary users to analyze MPs expenses (if interested check out the Google Docs Spreadsheet with this info). As noted in the article, there was another attempt to build such an app (see here for the alternative). This is both good and bad. It's good in the sense that no one organization has the ability to monopolize such initiatives. However, it is bad in the sense that the efforts of the crowd are effectively divided. Regardless, it does illustrate that the potential for "crowd sourced audits"."

However, the events in Egypt, Syria, and the coverage of  the Occupy Wallstreet Movement, illustrate the limits of social media on its ability to act as a check as a means to counter "official sources".  As noted in the following excerpt in the WSJ, there is a significant discrepancy in the death toll in the recent events in Egypt:

"The Associated Press cited the Ministry of Health as saying 525 people were killed across the country, with 3,717 injured. Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim said 43 policemen died in the assault, the Associated Press reported.

The Brotherhood placed the number of fatalities far higher—saying 2,200 people had been killed and more than 10,000 wounded."

To put the number of dead into perspective, the number killed (if the Brotherhood numbers are accurate) is the same scale as the number that died in September 11, 2001, which was 2,977.

What is interesting is that the Egyptian military actually targeted camera men to prevent images of the massacre from leaking out. For example, Mick Deane, a cameraman from Sky News was shot and killed by the Egyptian army. Also, as you can see in the video below, Ahmed Asem  (an Egyptian photojournalist) was killed while filming the Egyptian army kills others:


In Syria, even after horrifying images of chemical attacks were available from YouTube (no link was provided due to the gruesome nature of the attacks; however they can easily be found by putting "Syria Chemical Attacks" in YouTube), the mainstream continues to refer to them as "alleged".

With respect to the Occupy Movement, almost 8,000 people have been arrested. However, the mainstream media does not cover this and so a major crackdown on a significant social movement is effectively invisible to the mainstream society.

So what does this have to do with information integrity?

I have been fascinated with the portability of information integrity concepts to any information system, including the mass media system. For example, if one reads Manufacturing Consent, it is essentially a book that evaluates how the media is able to apply concepts, such as decision-usefulness, completeness, validity, etc to the way information is published or broadcast.

And this is the link to the social media.

One may think that with official media being unable to compete with social media, that the it will be replaced by social media. However, this is only from a business perspective. the real question is whether social media does actually alter the ability of the mass media to set the parameters of debate. In other words, can you or I can get on a blog expose the truth about something and create change society, based on the blog post?

As illustrated by the examples above, when the official media does not actually corroborate the social media, it effectively prevents social media from having an impact on society. I had mentioned in this in one of my earlier posts, the official media is still seen as a source of trust and verification, whereas social media is not. This ultimately prevents social media from ever truly supplanting old media, as people in a society ultimate rely on collective institutions to bind them together in a cohesive. So despite social media giving people the ability to contribute to the landscape ideas, it has not fundamentally altered the essence of power structures in society.

In other words, the "information system" that is within the society still remains where it always has.  And when the citizenry make decisions about societal matters, they ultimate rely on this information system for their opinions and beliefs, simply because the other sources can be doctored and faked, i.e. there are no official "information integrity" controls around social media. Consequently,  countries - be they dictatorial or democratic - can crackdown on their citizens and social media will not "materially" affect society's opinions or belief about the plight about that group or their cause.

The Power of Visualized Analytics

In my new role at Deloitte, I have recently come across tools, such as Tableau or Qlikview, that allow users to "visualize data". To be honest I didn't think they would add much value compared to "rule-based analytic tools", such as IDEA and ACL. However, after using these tools I realized the real power of being able to visualize data in contrast to producing an exception. It brings the dashboard concept within the executive management suite to the analyst or other business professional. But as they say "seeing is believing".

So let's try an experiment.

I recently came across an amazing visualization that really illustrates that power of visualization that visualizes economic data, specifically the distribution of wealth.

But don't click on it yet!

To get the most of the experiment first read this report (which the visualization is based on) to see how the stats hit you in terms of impact.

So here is an excerpt from the Oxfam report which the visualization is based on. (The numbers at the end of the sentence are footnotes; see the original report for the sources)

And

So now let's see how this data (plus other sources) hits you when it is visualized:


Is there really any contest?

What I've realized is that the visualization really enables the business user to bring together multiple dimensions into a single sheet of paper and enables you to tell the story about the underlying data. Having said that, I do believe that there is a complementary relationship between visualized analytics and rule-based analytics. For example, if you want to quantify the difference between budgets-and-actuals, produce a list of exceptions, etc, then rule based analytics are better for such a purpose. Furthermore, visualizations can help explain the results of rule-based analytic procedures.

Did McKinsey predict Google Now?

From a business perspective, one of the key publication on the phenomenon is the McKinsey report entitled, "Big data: The next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity". Although the report does not specifically mention Google, it predicted that Big Data would enable personal productivity and noted the following example to support its case:

"An example is a mobile phone that has learned its owner’s habits and preferences, that holds applications and data tailored to that particular user’s needs, and that will therefore be more valuable than a new device that is not customized to a user’s needs"

Well McKinsey was right on the money as Google introduced "Google Now", which would announce scores of one's favourite sports team - based on the person's search history. However, where does Big Data fit into this?

One of the applications that really illustrates the power of Google Now is the linking of traffic data to one's calendar to inform the person that they are going to be late for a meeting due to traffic issues. The video here lists other features:

The price for this (of course) is giving up one's personal data.

Regardless, it illustrates how Big Data is being a ubiquitous part of life. One other Google product that was released at their recent I/O conference in May, is the ability to use speech to search for things.

As you watch the video, you can almost see the wheels churning in the background to process the query. (I was able to replicate the voice search in my Chrome browser, but was not able to get it to do a context search. But I am not sure if I had to enable something to do that)

This ability to process query by voice, of course, will be quite useful for the upcoming Google Glass (I wrote earlier about it here), which is expected to be released in 2014.

However, it must be repeated that McKinsey was dead on the money with this one. 

Windows 8: Time to Eat Crow or Wait?

I have been mulling for some time whether it is time to eat crow over my previous post on how Windows 8 could potentially outrun the incumbent iPad, as the mobile device of choice. As I had noted in the post, I felt that the the Microsoft was attempted to ride the consumerization of IT wave and get the users up to speed on their "modern user interface" (Microsoft does not like the term "Metro" which tech journalist still use because that was its original code-name). Recent sales figures put Windows 8 roughly at the same level as Windows 7, when comparing the first 6 months of their sales. One may speculate that this was not the run away hit that Redmond was hoping for - this is based on the fact that they did not release the Windows 8 sales data during the Q3 earnings call. Reuters also points out that the average sales of Windows 8 is actually below Windows 7 and this could be due to the massive incentives that Microsoft was offering for people to upgrade their systems (e.g. buying a Windows 7 PC in the months before Windows 8's release an upgrade cost $15, in the few months after Windows 8's one could upgrade to Windows 8 for $40).

As I had noted in my post that there was tremendous room for Microsoft to shoot itself in the foot.  My analysis focused around the possibility of the Microsoft releasing Office on the iPad and Android mobile operating systems. However, the issue had to do with Microsoft's gamble that by forcing users to adopt the Metro interface (take that Microsoft!) they can move users away from the interface that they had got accustomed to years. John C Dovorak, a veteran journalist in the tech industry, noted in this PC Mag article (and many times on TWIT) that people like the simplicity of the desktop and there is no real compelling reason to leave this behind for the Metro interface. But to be fair, this is a hard call for Microsoft who did try to give the users the best of both worlds by giving the users the option to get to the desktop from the Metro interface.

One of the possible issues was Steven Sinofsky's approach to leadership (he was not known to be a nice guy), which may have prevented user feedback from being incorporated. Now that he's gone it appears that the next version of Windows, known as Windows 8.1 or Windows Blue will be bringing some features to "address customer feedback". Examples of such rumoured features include boot to desktop and bringing back the start button.

Although this may be good in terms of corralling the Windows faithful, the hope was that Windows 8 would give the iPad a run for its money.

Although a long shot, there is a possibility that Microsoft could still make this happen:  Amazon leaked this on their website: a $380 8.1 inch Windows 8 Tablet - that runs the full Windows 8 (i.e. not the more tablet oriented Windows RT) operating system. Although it does not come with MS Office 365, if you've bought for one machine you can share it with this tablet (and three other machines as noted in this previous post).

Although not likely a large factor in the overall success of Windows 8, the Washington giant did actually release a bizarre set of videos to advertise this OS (the Mashable links go to another YouTuber, but this one actually goes back to the official Windows 8 channel!):




As for me, I just ordered a Windows 7 laptop to replace the machine I am currently using. However, I am in the market for a tablet. If these tablet come in around the $300 to $400 range then I am definitely thinking of trying these machines out. In other words, I think I will wait before I eat crow.

Facebook Home: Privacy fears or a sign of decline?

As reported across the tech news sites, Facebook Home hit 500,000 downloads in the first 5 days. However, techcrunch gave some perspective. It noted that Instagram (which is owned by Facebook) had "over 5 million downloads in six days". So what is holding people back?

One possible issue is privacy. As noted in this previous post, the younger generation is privacy savvy and is opting for apps like SnapChat that don't retain pics and other personal info. So it may be possible that the not-so-hidden-cost of privacy is too high a price to pay. And many commentators have noted that this issue with respect to Facebook Home. As noted in this blogpost by GigaOm's founder, Om Malik, fears Facebook's past privacy issues will be especially problematic if Facebook can capture (and monetize) one location data. As pointed out by CIO.com this can be turned off, but how many people are not going to use the map feature of their phones to keep this private?

On the other hand, is Facebook as popular as it used to be? Speaking to a colleague at work, he notes that his "tween" son is using... (drum roll please)... Google Plus! Yes, that's right Google Plus - the social network that people mocked as a possible Facebook competitor is now being picked up (anecdotally) by the youth. Although this may be anecdotal evidence, Facebook last redesign was viewed by some as an imitation of Google Plus. For Facebook's version of the story check here:

Overall, it's quite fascinating how the social media sites and tech companies wax and wane in popularity. Remember RIM? The company that could do wrong, now is on fighting (one could argue valiantly, but that could be the nostalgia in me talking.) for spot number 3 in the smartphone wars. Of course the biggest giant to fall from the public's favour is Apple with it's stock sliding from a height of $705 to a current price of just under $400.

However, as pointed out by Horace Dediu on this podcast, Facebook has effectively circumvented Google by making this the home screen on Google's real estate. He has good analysis of the whole supply chain, making an analogy of Facebook's strategy to Intel's strategy of "Intel Inside":


Furthermore, GM's back as an advertiser on Facebook. They made an exit last year, but has returned "and will take advantage of Facebook’s new mobile targeting features". So despite the slow number of downloads and potential privacy issues Facebook Home is hardly down and out.

Big Data, Facial Recognition and Privacy

In October of 2012, the FTC released these guidelines on dealing with the privacy issues of facial recognition. The publication begins with a scene from the movie Minority Report where the protagonist is offered a product based on facial recognition software. When the movie came out, this future seemed decades away. However, now it just seems around the corner. And this is primarily due to advances in data mining capabilities brought to you by the cloud and more specifically big data. One of key characteristics of Big Data (see here for IBM's definition) is being able to include data that is not just massive or fast moving, but also goes beyond the simple world of flat file - meaning it includes images.

And here comes the interesting part about privacy and big data. Think about the following scenario: you walk  into a store, the security cameras take your picture, it's uploaded to Google Images (see below for how this works), a second search is done to find out what you've posted publicly on the various social sites and then you are approached by a sales associate who has all this information about you and then can tailor its offerings to you.

Privacy regulations requires that users give consent before their information is collected. So could this simply be circumvented by posting a sign that states "By entering this premises, you consent to the store collecting your image and using that information to tailor offerings, services and the like to your online profile"?

I think so.

As I posted last week, TJX was effectively able to stop the Canadian privacy watchdog, by agreeing to encrypt the personal information it should not collect. So it does not take much for companies to persuade users (or the privacy regulators) to get what they want from their customers/users. At the end of they day, companies simply have to repeat the Capitalist mantra: "You are free to go somewhere else if you don't like our policies". Never mind that all the companies have the same policies, which means you don't have any choice except to wear a mask when you enter the store. And that is not advisable because it may be result in being billy clubbed or tazered by security guards! Or to be a little less dramatic, the store will simply offer to refuse you service if you wear a mask.

The Killing of Google Reader: Proof that Privacy Matters at Google?

Google announced last month that it was going to kill off Google Reader. According to the post, the reason that was given that there was a decline in the number of subscribers. For the past few years, Google has been consolidating its offerings and reducing the number of properties that it has out there. For example, it retired Google Wave, which was seen as a way to revolutionize the way people conversed with one another. The other trend in Google' s consolidation is to get its subscribers into its social network; Google Plus. So another theory is that Google killed Reader because it wants to drive more traffic to its social network - as they have done with things such as YouTube, Blogger, etc.

However, allthingsD reported that another factor that led to Google retiring reader was due to compliance with privacy. Citing "sources" the elimination of reader, "[w]asn’t just a matter of company culture and bigger priorities...Google is also trying to better orient itself so that it stops getting into trouble with repeated missteps around compliance issues, particularly privacy".

If what sources are saying are true, the factoring of privacy costs into its product releases represent a significant maturation from a privacy perspective. Google got in trouble with the FTC because it failed to comply with privacy procedures with Google Buzz and had to submit to biennial privacy audits for 20 years. In other words, Google can probably include the "kill decision" as "audit evidence" as proof that they are complying with their commitment to privacy.

So is this proof that the US overall approach to privacy creates a more privacy compliant nature than the one used in Canada? Although more research would be required to answer this question, we can contrast the proactive nature of Google with respect to privacy and how TJX reacted to its breach of privacy policy in Canada. The Privacy Commissioner of Canada's took issue with TJX's (which operates Winners in Canada) the use of driver's licenses during the returns process. In summary, TJX should not be collecting driver's license information because it has nothing to do with buying clothes, etc at the stores! However, instead of stopping the process, the company merely agreed to stop storing in an unencrypted format. In other words, they basically ignored PIPEDA and continued with business as usual.