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How can we balance restricting harmful/fake content with privacy?

December 9, 2019December 9, 2019
by Andy

There have been two major issues in tech over the past couple of years which are highly related yet I haven’t seen much talk about their interplay: how to rid (primarily social media) from harmful/fake content and maintain people’s privacy. The former coming to prominence after the 2016 election “influence” campaigns and subsequent revelations around Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and others trying to deal with fake accounts.

Allowing users to mask their identities has been a hallmark of social networks and user generated content (UGC) sites since their formation. After some egregious cases of harmful and hateful content arising early on, each made tacit attempts to ensure identities. Bots and incentivitized users easily worked around them. Few — notably Airbnb after some high profile problems — went to a REAL ID system. This requires users to present multiple forms of government issued ID to establish their identity. REAL ID isn’t perfect, but it certainly reduces the number of fake/anonymous accounts.

On the other side, there has been concern around user privacy and the use of personally identifiable information (PII) that these sites collect. Once again, Facebook unfortunately took the lead here in allowing data to be used in malicious ways demonstrating how dangerous companies controlling PII can be. Since then, there have been many voices, including governmental, calling for significant privacy constraints and for users to “own” their data and identities.

These types of controls are easier said than done. However, it demonstrates that people are not comfortable with big tech (and others for that matter) having this information and, either through malicious or incompetent behavior, may misuse it. This, unfortunately, is in direct conflict with the desire to have more transparency and identity on social media to attempt to limit harmful/fake content so as to better police it. What to do?

My proposal is for a multi-layered system which addresses both issue:

Any internet property which allows users to post content (e.g. social networks and UGC sites) must verify their identity using a system like REAL ID.
The company may only verify the identification documents but may not store any PII information associated with them. They must keep their own internal ID for each users which has no way of being reverse engineered into PII.
Each company must ask (and give access to change at any time) users what information about them that they’re allowed to store. This includes what public persona/name/nickname the user wants displayed along with their content.
The government will establish a system for REAL ID based on the issuing entity. When an ID verification request is sent to the government API, valid requests will have a unique set of characters returned to the requesting company (we’ll call this encrypted ID) which they MUST store with the company’s internal unique ID for that user. The government entity must keep storage of all encrypted IDs and their association with REAL IDs. Each requesting company must get a different encrypted ID but a consistent one for the same user on subsequent requests.
If there is suspicion of a crime, a law enforcement entity with a subpoena can request the encrypted ID associated with any account. That can then be used to reveal the REAL ID already stored in the government database.
Each REAL ID API call by companies will incur a small fee so as to pay for scalable and secure data systems that the government must maintain.

This system isn’t perfect but will a) curb bad behavior online with the knowledge that if you cross a line, you could get a visit from law enforcement b) greatly restrict bots and malicious actors from gaining accounts c) support a government program to protect IDs but associate them with real identities they already issue and protect d) do not allow companies to hold PII which could be used maliciously or hacked.

Are there people who would lose their important anonymity under this plan? You don’t have to keep any PII with the company, only the government (and you do this today)?

What about authoritarian governments and how they could abuse this? Yes, that’s a concern but is also a larger issue. In any case, this does not address private messaging apps and other types of sites, only public content ones.

Thoughts?

Commentary

My appearance on Reuters CCTV talking about next day…

December 3, 2019
by Andy

I was recently interviewed by Reuters CCTV for their segment on Ohi, a startup building micro-warehouses in urban centers to provide non-Amazon ecommerce with next and same day delivery.

Reuters CCTV

President Nixon Never Actually Gave This Apollo 11 Disaster…

December 1, 2019
by Andy

This is impressive and, as the quality goes up and the computing + expertise needed to produce these goes down, we’re going to enter an even stranger phase of “fake news” and an alternate facts.

A new MIT film installation uses that exact premise to shed light on so-called deepfake videos and how they are used to spread misinformation. Deepfakes use artificial intelligence technologies to create or alter a video to make them untrue in some way. MIT’s Center for Advanced Virtuality created a video of Nixon giving a speech that was actually written for him — but that he never ended up delivering. The video is the centerpiece of “In Event of Moon Disaster,” opening Friday at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA). The installation was supported by the Mozilla Foundation and the MIT Open Documentary Lab.
https://www.wbur.org/news/2019/11/22/mit-nixon-deep-fake

Brand

Elon Musk’s strategy for Tesla is ?

November 25, 2019April 26, 2022
by Andy

With Tesla, people often forget several asymmetric advantages they have right now:

They do no marketing saving a significant % of revenue where traditional automakers in hyper-competitive situations must
They capture most of the sale price of the car due to a lack of dealer commission/cost meaning significant margin/pricing advantages
The perceived value of their cars (e.g. resale value) is much higher due to most of the car being “updatable” via software
They have vertically integrated the energy storage (batteries) and source (superchargers) giving a distinct technology and cost advantage (some of which passes onto their customers)

As they scale, it will be interesting to see which of these erode first.

Tesla Cybertruck

Futuristic, polarizing design aside, I actually think the Cybertruck is brilliant on multiple levels. First, the specs are off the chart when compared to the truck market today. Second, by doing an exoskeleton design (vs. traditional frame) they have key disruptive advantages that competitors cannot easily respond to. Finally, even though they compared it to the F-150, its smart to market this to a niche (and possibly new) truck buying audience. Expanding the market is always a better path but not always available. Besides the technical advantages in manufacturing, the planer design clearly puts people on the love/hate line and no one will have a hard time comparing and deciding vs. a traditional pick-up. Tesla runs on and builds enthusiasts. Why stop with their truck?

Culture

This is why hackathons are essentially useless

November 25, 2019
by Andy

I’ve long been skeptical about hackathons which has been reinforced by from my firsthand experience and talking to other tech leaders especially inside large traditional companies where these have become popular over the past decade. I like the metaphor that you can’t run a marathon to get into shape which is what this approach is. Idea generation should be fluid and facilitated at all times by all those working on customer needs (hopefully most of your organization).

Think of it this way: For every runaway success that came out of a hackathon, such as Facebook’s “like” button, there are many more ideas that ended up shoved in a drawer, archived in a folder, or, worse, tossed in the trash bin. For the majority of participants, these events that are intended to empower can end up being pretty discouraging.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90430416/this-is-why-hackathons-are-essentially-useless

They are often used not only to generate ideas but help morale allowing people the “fun” of spending a day or two out of their mundane job working on new cool things. The irony is that they end up hurting morale as people get really excited they’re onto something which then dies on the vine either due to lack of process to take the idea forward or lack of stakeholder support (I’ve seen too many where the only reason leadership was doing it was to make the company seem “cool” and help as a hiring talking point to really have it backfire into cynicism).

“Innovation theater” … describes the phenomenon of a company making a big show of driving innovation without putting much in the way of resources or substance behind it. In many ways, hackathons are a perfect example of this. They’re highly visible, simple to understand, and seem like an easy way for a company to check the “innovative” box. But what a hackathon doesn’t do is deliver much tangible return for the business or for the employee. It’s a misstep if you realize that after it’s over, all you’ve done is divert resources away from the day-to-day of your business to focus on projects that will never reach your clients.

Any innovation activity has to be contextualized with goals that align to the company’s. Otherwise, there will be lots of cool ideas which have little value. Initiatives with high ROI potential are what innovation activities should be about whether its incremental operational improvement or breakout ideas to move into adjacent businesses.

We’re still keeping channels open at an enterprise-wide level through initiatives such as an online idea submission forum, which allows an employee or team to submit any new ideas for review

The author isn’t clear on how they are organized for it but one mistake organizations make is thinking everyone can be an “innovator”. There are two problems with this:

People cannot hold both operational responsibility and expect to spend significant time researching new initiatives. The operational fire drills and goals will always suck up the oxygen.
Operational and R&D mindsets are notably different. The first brings in people who make today a bit better than yesterday and tomorrow better than today. The latter is all about an exploratory mindset to prove oneself wrong until you can’t (and then you have something). It involves a lot of trial and error throwing valuable work away. Not many people can work that way.

Ideas are cheap and should come from anywhere at any time — hopefully, mostly from customer research. What you need is a dedicated team with a strong iterative, test & learn process to incubate them and cast the vast majority of bad ones aside. I share the author’s idea of “investing” in new ideas by looking at ROI. However, that should not be the first step but only after there’s a problem-solution fit.

Product Management

“Social-desirability bias”

November 24, 2019
by Andy

Pollsters refer to this phenomenon as the “shy Trump” effect, or — in academic parlance — a form of “social-desirability bias.” Studies have affirmed that in races where a candidate or cause is perceived as controversial or otherwise undesirable, voters can be wary of voicing their support, especially to a live interviewer.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/23/us/politics/2020-trump-presidential-polls.html

This is an interesting concept that applies more broadly than elections for interviewing for interest in products as well. There are certainly products which people need/want but are often unwilling to disclose (e.g. certain health, financial or “guilty pleasure” items). When interviewing customers this has to be taken into account or else it might product spurious results similar to asking people “how much would you pay for X?”

It sought to combat the shy Trump effect by asking respondents not only how they planned to vote but also how they thought their neighbors would vote — possibly offering Trump supporters a way to project their feelings onto someone else. The AAPOR report posited that the neighbor question could help overcome shyness among Trump supporters, particularly in phone interviews.

This is an interesting technique. A little bit like Net-promoter Score (NPS) where you’re asking about something a bit disembodied to try and glean better results. The “Well, I have this friend…” effect.

E-commerce

THE EVERYTHING TOWN IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE

November 19, 2019
by Andy

Arbitrage situations are often exploiting inefficiencies as noted here between brick-and-mortar retailers and Amazon. Per the quote below, its difficult to not wince at the negative impact shipping goods around as much as these do. The bigger insight is how much slack the Amazon seller model has vs. traditional retail. Storage limitations aside, I have a lot more inventory exposure running a few stores regionally than with Amazon’s global reach and their ability to optimize logistics. Yet another way the traditional small retailer struggles to compete. However, opens up many new “small business” opportunities as noted below.

I’m not a believer in the zero-sum automation/digital story that some put forward. Each industrial revolution has been disruptive to large swaths of jobs but created many new ones. The important part is providing the training, low-interest loans and other support to transition people…or, as noted in the article, they’ll do it themselves. SBA is important here.

“I’m basically moving inventory from one warehouse, to my fulfillment center, and then to Amazon to a third fulfillment center, and then to finally being sold to some customer at the end point,” says Chris Grant, a seller based in Orlando who just contracted with a prep center in Montana. “Which when you kind of take a 50,000 foot view of it, it kind of seems really inefficient.”
https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/14/20961523/amazon-walmart-target-package-delivery-sales-tax-montana-roundup

What's tech?

What’s Tech?

November 18, 2019
by Andy

A bunch of announcements and activity this week around the forthcoming streaming battles. It seems that the tipping point has finally arrived with cord cutting that content providers are going all-in on direct to consumer streamers with Disney+ garnering 10m subs in 24 hours (likely a record).

The forthcoming landscape is not sustainable as subscribing to Disney, Netflix, Hulu, Peacock, Apple TV+, Amazon Prime, etc. will run you more than cable. Walls are being built and there will be consolidation but these are all big players so interesting to watch esp as others enter the fray with boxes meant facilitate like Verizon did this week.

Media

Stream TV Review: Verizon’s New Streaming Device Is One…

November 18, 2019
by Andy

It is an odd duck but foretells a potential disruptive move in the cable/MSO/content space. This is Verizon Wireless not Verizon Fios who is doing this. This box, combined with their 5G service, is a potential disrupter to the MSO space (older brother Fios included).

MSOs make most of their margin on internet services vs. content. The content side comes from the legacy TV services they run (and are chartered to continue). It always baffled me why they fight cord cutting so hard. They should welcome more network subscribers and be happy to offload the content wars to others (e.g. Netflix, Disney+, NBC/Peacock, Hulu, etc.)

Verizon has an answer to Roku, but it’s not talking much about it: The mobile carrier quietly released a new streaming device this week that promises to bring services like HBO, Hulu and YouTube to your TV. Dubbed Stream TV, the device is a solid streamer based on Google’s Android TV platform, albeit with a few notable omissions. Instead of signing up customers for its expensive Fios TV service, Verizon aims to offer them a cheap and easy way to get to their favorite streaming apps, while hopefully using Verizon’s network for internet access. The carrier is giving Stream TV for free to anyone who subscribes to the company’s new 5G Home Internet service — a service that is for now only available in parts of Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Sacramento and Chicago.
https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/verizon-stream-tv-review-1203405682/

So maybe the real disruption in the space is not coming from an upstart but a big player who has assets to break the cable company physical lock-in and who’s happy to allow you to stream whatever content you like. Its an odd duck now but affords this future. Now let’s see when 5G comes about and if it can handle this volume.

Media

Why Is Every Streaming Service Using the Same Pricing…

November 18, 2019
by Andy

I’m not sure I’m clear on the author’s thesis here. One size fits all likely is leaving profits on the table as price sensitive customers do not join and the most passionate customers would pay more under a metered system. However, the argument that rolling back to complex wireless style plans does not hold up. Studies have shown too much choice in acquiring a product leads to inaction (aka the “Chinese menu effect”). Wireless carriers amongst others didn’t simplify out of generosity toward their customers. They had enough pricing data to be able to simplify and optimize. Thus, at best, the argument can only be made that these content providers have not yet tested enough to know their price sensitivity and optimal pricing.

A one-price-fits-all strategy fails to acknowledge the simple fact that for any product or service, customers have unique needs and a different willingness to pay.
https://hbr.org/2019/11/why-is-every-streaming-service-using-the-same-pricing-model

Which offers an opportunity to actually test pricing here to see sensitivity. And these pricing tiers could even remain beyond a test but the point is to sub-segment your customers based on need and then target them with different offers (e.g. unlimited kids content vs. all Star Wars vs. one low price for a given series). What Netflix has learned (and thus drives their content strategy) is that to keep subscribers, you only need one proprietary show they are passionate about and can’t get elsewhere which is why they continue to produce hyper-niche content.

It’s odd that with the exception of Disney+, which is offering discounts for a long-term commitment, streaming services typically only offer month-to-month plans. This pricing strategy makes it easy to turn services on and off. (In theory, I could watch all of Succession by subscribing to HBO Max for just one month.) Volume discounts — committing to a period of time — can be employed to reduce customer churn.

https://hbr.org/2002/09/pricing-and-the-psychology-of-consumption

The author should read the HBR article on the psychology of consumption to see that annual lock-in discounts are very often sub-optimal especially for intangible goods (e.g. gym memberships, content). Those need to be reinforced regularly so that customers realize value and keep their subscription as the study in the article describes.

E-commerce

‘Brands don’t need Amazon.’ Nike’s departure could prompt others…

November 18, 2019
by Andy

“Brands don’t need Amazon,” Jefferies analyst Randy Konik said. “Amazon had a delivery speed advantage, but that advantage has compressed. With Nike leaving the Amazon platform … it strengthens our view that retailers/brands won’t be displaced by Amazon.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/13/brands-dont-need-amazon-nikes-departure-could-prompt-others-to-go.html

To a degree, I agree with the sentiment that “brands don’t need Amazon”. However, I think the framing is along the traditional lines of the brand-retailer (e.g. brick-and-mortar) relationship. Digital and e-commerce are different.

First, Amazon provides a “halo” brand that, to a degree, traditional retailers could not. While one knew the types of shoe selection they were to find in a K-Mart store vs. Nordstroms, the retail brand did not provide much else in regard to the customer experience for that product. Amazon is notably different: the reviews alone completely change the customer experience and thus brand relationship. The Amazon “brand” and experience here becomes an important factor in the way no retailer ever did.

That said, Amazon does not allow brands to exercise other “experience” elements which they use to differentiate themselves. Its a limited palette to paint upon and Amazon has not deviated much from this where brands could buy space and co-promotions as in traditional retail.

However, there’s a simple economic factor that Nike was likely experimenting with here — and helps reinforce Google’s shopping approach (e.g. ads only) — in is the 15% fee Amazon takes on the sale plus whatever marketing spend needed to promote products out strip buying ads on Google Shopping (and social media et al)? If its even (or roughly close), brands will choose non-Amazon as they retain far greater control of the experience that they’ve always tried to differentiate on.

Nike is a bellwether here so look out for how this influences others. And, at the end of the day, this was a growth option for Amazon and they have other avenues for this including the myriad on Amazon-only brands that now exist due to the “halo” effect.

Entrepreneurship

It’s a Disservice to Urge Young People To Become…

November 17, 2019
by Andy

I speak often to those I advise and my students about the misguided path of rocket ship entrepreneurship that pervades business “pop-culture” today. VC is broken in funding too many ideas that should just be nice small to mid-sized enterprises. The real problem is that young people aren’t being taught business fundamentals along with the new models that tech enables. This, coupled with a grounding in how you can structure and fund businesses outside of VC, is most important and most overlooked.

I received sage advice many years ago when thinking about a new venture: what is your goal with the business? Do you really believe this is a .0001% venture-backed rocket-ship or is this going to be a self-sustaining small to mid-sized business (as the vast majority of the 7,000,000 private companies in the US are).

“Lifestyle” businesses somehow became a derogatory term. Here’s to right scaled businesses that generate cash flow and return dividends to investors who have their goals aligned with the entrepreneur. Digital business models only make this even more feasible with lower fixed costs and assets.

Everywhere you look these days, there are people and programs urging people just out of school to forget working for the man; instead, just start a new business and become a folk hero. The legend of the twenty-something business wunderkind is everywhere in pop culture. Here’s the problem. The data are in. It turns out that the whole thing is a gigantic myth.
https://www.aier.org/article/its-a-disservice-to-urge-young-people-to-become-entrepreneurs/

Regulation

The Rising Threat of Digital Nationalism

November 15, 2019
by Andy

The quandary over what happens to the public network as national laws (and varying degrees of liberalism) are applied be it in the name or due to crisis is challenging. I don’t see how you can get countries to agree to a set of liberal ideals that large chunks of news, discourse and commerce have gone there. They won’t give so easily.

But things have been changing recently. Nicholas Negroponte, a co-founder of the MIT Media Lab, once said that national law had no place in cyberlaw. That view seems increasingly anachronistic. Across the world, nation-states have been responding to a series of crises on the internet (some real, some overstated) by asserting their authority and claiming various forms of digital sovereignty. A network that once seemed to effortlessly defy regulation is being relentlessly, and often ruthlessly, domesticated.
[…]

It turns out that the way to deal with offline and online nationalism may be quite similar: Restore a sense of inclusiveness and fair play, flatten some of the sharpest inequalities and rediscover and stress the principles that made the network so inspiring (and radically creative) in the first place. As it happens, there is a tool kit, both existing and emerging, to do some of this.

Mr. Verhulst, from the GovLab at NYU, argues that laws and principles from a previous era should be updated for the 21st century, by applying telecom universal service obligations to broadband, for example, and diversity and equal-time rules (sometimes applied to radio and television) to large news and social-media networks. “It’s not like we don’t know how to go about this,” he says. “We just have to be more creative and think of what we can learn from models that were used in the past.” Competition law is another area that has received a lot of attention, specifically the need to update its provisions to take account of the (nominally) free business models practiced by many digital companies.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-rising-threat-of-digital-nationalism-11572620577

Behavioral economics

Danny Kahneman: Putting your Intuition on Ice

November 12, 2019
by Andy

I’m a big fan of Danny Kahneman who, along with Amos Tversky, created the field of behavioral economics. If you haven’t read the book about their shared history, The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis, you should. Kahneman’s book Thinking Fast & Slow is also excellent.

He covers a range of issues here and well worth the time. But this is not a passive listen podcast. Pay attention: negotiations, pre-mortems, organizational decision making, intuition & judgement, biases, etc…what’s not to like.

Here are a few highlights from our conversation:
I think changing behavior is extremely difficult. There are a few tips and a few guidelines about how to do that, but anybody who’s very optimistic about changing behavior is just deluded. It’s hard to change other people’s behavior. It’s very hard to change your own. Not simple.
I’d like people to know that motivation is complex, and that people do good things for a mixture of good and bad reasons; and they do bad things for a mixture of good and bad reasons. I think that there is a point to educating people in psychology. It’s to make them less judgmental. Just have more empathy and more patience. Being judgmental doesn’t get you anywhere.
What gets in the way of clear thinking is that we have intuitive views of almost everything. So as soon as you present a problem to me, I have some ready made answer. What gets in the way of clear thinking are those ready made answers, and we can’t help but have them.
We have beliefs because mostly we believe in some people, and we trust them. We adopt their beliefs. We don’t reach our beliefs by clear thinking, unless you’re a scientist or doing something like that. There’s a fair amount of emotion when you’re a scientist as well that gets in the way of clear thinking. Commitments to your previous views, being insulted that somebody thinks he’s smarter than you are. I mean lots of things get in the way, even when you’re a scientist. So I’d say there is less clear thinking than people like to think.
Very quickly you form an impression, and then you spend most of your time confirming it instead of collecting evidence.
Negotiations is not about trying to convince the other guy. It’s about trying to understand them. So again, it’s slowing yourself down. It’s not doing what comes naturally because trying to convince them is applying pressure. Arguments, promises, and threats are always applying pressure. What you really want is to understand what you can do to make it easy for them to move your way. Very non-intuitive. That’s a surprising thing when you teach negotiation. It’s not obvious. We are taught to apply pressure and socialize that way.
Independence is the key because otherwise when you don’t take those precautions, it’s like having a bunch of witnesses to some crime and allowing those witnesses to talk to each other. They’re going to be less valuable if you’re interested in the truth than keeping them rigidly separate, and collecting what they have to say.
https://fs.blog/daniel-kahneman/

Economics

ECONOMISTS ON THE RUN

October 26, 2019
by Andy

Good article on the scourge of 90s globalization economic theory as championed by Paul Krugman which has now fallen out of favor as reality has struck. I think the more interesting point here — other than pointing out not only how wrong Krugman was but how anyone who challenged him at the time was belittled as intellectually inferior — is not about how this could have adversely affected the 2016 election, but how complete focus on quantitative measures can lead one astray.

Its not hard to see, as many of those questioning globalization economic policy at the time were, how qualitatively looking at how a plant closing in a community can suddenly have starkly different outcomes for the workers and leaders of a company. Do that 1000s of times over and you have a major social problem and wealth gap that we now find ourselves in.

As the economists did see in their models, in the long term, this largely balances out. We’re seeing a bit of this in how outsourcing low-end service jobs to India used to be 1/10th the cost. Its now more like 1/2 the cost and challenges with quality control, productivity and managing a global workforce bring in to question the real savings.

Alternatively, a high wage country like Germany maintains economic balance keeping manufacturing domestic with highly trained and skilled workers that have a production efficiency rate unmatched globally.

I’m not advocating a particular political view here. I believe in technology advancement for human progress understanding the qualitative impact as well as the quantitative we’ve become so good at. However, that rarely considers those left on the sidelines who do not have the skills to compete. Protectionism via unions isn’t the answer. Training is. If we enact a policy that loosens trade barriers, invent an automation technology that displaces jobs or open the trade door allowing low wage economies to take low wage jobs, we must have commensurate training to bring the most exposed workers into the new economy. There has never been a significant technological revolution (including the industrial revolution) which has solely displaced jobs. Those jobs just migrated to a new skill base. As Robert Reich has always advocated, government policy and funding should be directed toward this.

Paul Krugman has never suffered fools gladly. The Nobel Prize-winning economist rose to international fame—and a coveted space on the New York Times op-ed page—by lacerating his intellectual opponents in the most withering way. In a series of books and articles beginning in the 1990s, Krugman branded just about everybody who questioned the rapid pace of globalization a fool who didn’t understand economics very well. “Silly” was a word Krugman used a lot to describe pundits who raised fears of economic competition from other nations, especially China. Don’t worry about it, he said: Free trade will have only minor impact on your prosperity.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/22/economists-globalization-trade-paul-krugman-china/