New “right to forget” legislation in the European Union is quickly turning into a muddle.
The law gives citizens the right to request that Google remove links to information about them considered “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant.”
On the face of it, that seems like a good idea.
But with Google controlling 90 per cent of the search market in Europe, the removal of a link to a story is akin to deleting it.
The Guardian, BBC and Mail Online are among news organizations that have had posts on their websites forgotten.
“It is the equivalent of going into libraries and burning books you don’t like,” Mail Online publisher Martin Clarke said in an AP story.
The Guardian called it a “challenge to press freedom.”
BBC Economics Editor Robert Peston said Wednesday the removal of his 2007 blog post, which was critical of Merrill Lynch’s then-CEO Stan O’Neal, means “to all intents and purposes the article has been removed from the public record, given that Google is the route to information and stories for most people.”
To its credit, Google is being cautious as it feels its way through this minefield.
“This is a new and evolving process for us,” Google spokesman Al Verney said Thursday. “We’ll continue to listen to feedback and will also work with data protection authorities and others as we comply with the ruling.”
When the law was first proposed, I thought it would be a good way of moving past unflattering photos or references to youthful hijinks. There’s no need to have things like that haunt you for the rest of your life.
But, as usual, when government intrudes on our freedoms, the result is unintended consequences — and a mess that will have to be cleaned up.
For better or worse, news organizations increasingly rely on social media such as Twitter to promote their stories, boost pageviews, and — with any luck — bring in more ad revenue to pay journalists.
Some places now have whole teams dedicated to the vagaries of social media, which includes agonizing over the writing of tweets so they get the most retweets possible.
At Cornell University, three computer scientists have created an algorithm they claim does better than the average person at getting those precious retweets.
That’s not something we humans should take lying down. If you think you can outsmart some software, try this test at The Upshot — a blog at the New York Times website. You’ll be presented with two similar tweets and be asked to choose which got the most retweets.
I tried it myself, and mostly got right answers. And I was a little surprised at some of the ones I got wrong. Still, it’s a good learning experience — not to mention a lot of fun.
Robots are not only writing financial reports for the AP, but they’re also churning out copy in other news organizations.
USA Today gives a number of examples, such as little league baseball stories and fantasy football recaps.
They’re more sophisticated that I imagined, with some software being tuned for “humour and tone.”
Yahoo, which uses Wordsmith for its fantasy football site, has ordered the fantasy draft recaps for the coming season to include more jokes and snark.
For example, a fantasy football team owner may have drafted several players who are not playing on the same weekend because their teams don’t have games. “The draft recap might say: ‘You might as well go to the beach during Week 10.’ ”
Not exactly a gut-buster, but I’ve seen worse — written by humans.
Speaking of robot humour, here’s a prescient joke from 2006:
A robot walks into a bar, orders a drink, and lays down some cash.
Bartender says, “Hey, we don’t serve robots.”
And the robot says, “Oh, but someday you will.”
The image at the top is from a website called Robot Cake Tank. Be sure to visit and see the rest of the joke.
The AP wire service has announced plans to automate the process of writing business earnings reports, according to Poynter’s MediaWire.
While it’s fun to refer to this as using robots, as suggested by the article’s headline (AP will use robots to write some business stories), we shouldn’t get too carried away. The kind of reports being generated here are largely boilerplate stuff anyway, and for most journalists they are a boring and repetitive task.
In the end, automation will mean many more earnings reports can be created, and journalists can spend more time on substantive pieces that look at what the numbers mean. So everybody wins!
Technology has not always brought a lot of joy to the news industry, but this would appear to be one time when we should welcome it.
In a report published at the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Facebook data scientists conducted an experiment to manipulate the emotions of nearly 700,000 users to see if positive or negative emotions are as contagious on social networks as they are in the real world. By tweaking Facebook’s powerful News Feed algorithm, some users (we should probably just call them “lab rats” at this point) were shown fewer posts with positive words. Others saw fewer posts with negative words. “When positive expressions were reduced,” the paper states, “people produced fewer positive posts and more negative posts; when negative expressions were reduced, the opposite pattern occurred. These results indicate that emotions expressed by others on Facebook influence our own emotions, constituting experimental evidence for massive-scale contagion via social networks.”
The thing that bothers me about the increasing reliance on social media as a form of communication is that it is run by private companies whose aim is not the public good but their own enrichment. This isn’t like email or the web — neutral services we are free to use as we see fit.
Companies such as Facebook no doubt want to keep their users happy. They want to build loyalty and grow through word-of-mouth advocacy. But they are ultimately beholden to advertisers who naturally expect a return on their investment.
So if Facebook can find a way to increase the profits of its customers by manipulating the people the ads are aimed at, then why wouldn’t they? It might not seem unethical to us to be used as unwitting guinea pigs, but from the point of view of the ultimate goal (making money) it could be viewed as entirely the right thing to do.
The news industry’s digital transition is filled with rays of hope, predictions of doom and downright confusion. Some of the greatest minds in journalism have tried to figure out how the profession will thrive in an era where funding for it has become increasingly scarce.
New York University prof Clay Shirky has accused his peers of leading young people astray by implying that there is any future at all in print journalism. He says Ray Chittum of the Columbia Journalism Review and Ken Doctor of Nieman Journalism Lab are among the adults who are lying to students about the future of print.
The way Shirky sees it, newspapers are dying and — rather than be nostalgic about it — we should be up front with journalism students.
Chittum was offended by the implication that he was lying and replied via Twitter with a “f— you.” He later responded with his own post declaring that, while he agrees the future of journalism is digital, he takes a more nuanced approach on print. Today, print still brings in more money than digital and is thus better able to support journalism. The transition to digital is clear, but the business model to support it is not.
I’m glad to see this kind of debate out in the open. Change is never easy, especially when few people can agree on how it will play out. My hope is that young people will read both Shirky and Chittum, then come up with a workable plan of their own — the one that is so far eluding us.
I’m taking an online course on data journalism, and the section on visualization has links to some blog-style websites that are regularly updated with great examples of infographics.
Flowing Data is the one I like best. The examples not only look good but also provide valuable insight. Information Aesthetics and Cool Infographics tend more toward eye candy but are also well worth perusing.
You see them all the time while navigating the web — generic top-level domains. These are the .coms, .orgs and .nets commonly tagged onto the end of website addresses. For specific countries, you’ll variations such as .ca for Canada.
But how would you feel about a website with an address ending in .sucks?
An organization called ICANN is busy cranking out hundreds of new top-level domains with just about every word you can imagine. Among the latest are .global, .engineer, .nhk, .hamburg and .rehab. There’s also .republican, .lawyer, .mortgage, .hiv and .website. Yes, .website just in case you didn’t that what you were visiting was a website.
And there’s plenty more to come. ICANN makes its decisions in a byzantine process that starts with applications from companies that hope to make use of the new top-level domains. In the case of .sucks, there are three in the running: Top Level Spectrum Inc., Dog Bloom LLC and Vox Populi Registry Inc.
What possible motivation could they have for pursuing something as bad as .sucks? Well, if you look at the application status, in each case it is said to have passed “initial evaluation” and to be “in auction.” That means they’re going to have to scrap it out with each other for .sucks.
Beyond that we can only speculate. My thought is that pretty much every company or organization with a reputation to protect would have to buy this top-level domain to ensure that some malicious person doesn’t do it first. Imagine how much money some low-life could make by registering apple.sucks, posting critical content on it, then selling it for big bucks to Apple just so they can shut it down.
What other reason would you want .sucks in your web address? Because you’re selling vacuum cleaners?
On its website, ICANN says: “The new generic top-level domain program was developed to increase competition and choice in the domain name space.”
I’ve long suspected that in reality it is a scam to sell website owners something they don’t really need. And if .sucks actually starts showing up in URLs, I’ll be convinced of it.
Cutbacks in the news industry are making it tough on journalists, but businesses looking for publicity can take advantage of that, says Elisha McCallum, vice-president of the Vancouver public relations firm FleishmanHillard.
She spoke Monday morning at a workshop organized by Kamloops Innovation.
Reporters are under pressure to do more work in less time, plus they are expected to provide updates around the clock, McCallum said.
So they appreciate as much pre-packaged content as they can get for their stories. This includes photos, videos, backgrounders, fact sheets, plus someone who can be interviewed.
Once you’ve successfully pitched a story, it’s a good idea to be prepared for an interview, she said.
Make sure you have three key messages that you want to come through no matter what twists and turns the interview might take. If a question takes you away from your message, use bridging statements to get back on track.
If you do get a difficult question, ask for clarification so you have a chance to collect your thoughts, McCallum said. And if the question has negative words in it, don’t repeat those words.
If you’re hoping to expand your business, one of the most important things you can do is communicate with customers. Let them tell you what you’re doing right or wrong so you can make changes to make them happy — and they pull out their credit cards more often.
During a recent talk at Thompson Rivers University, sponsored by Kamloops Innovation, Lars Lofgren, Growth Manager at KISSmetrics, pointed out that it’s important to get to know what potential customers are thinking before you even start a business.
KISSmetrics is a competitor to Google Analytics, offering insight into data collected from visitors to websites offering a product or service.
Lofgren said if you want to know whether your product is good enough to build a business on, you should ask 500 people this question: How would you feel if you could no longer use my product? 1. Very disappointed. 2. Somewhat disappointed. 3. Not disappointed. Your goal is to have 40 per cent respond that they would be very disappointed.
If the numbers aren’t where you want them, you can use surveys that focus on making things better for those who would be somewhat disappointed.
Surveys should try to get at people’s feelings. What is the primary benefit of the product? How could it be improved? How would you describe it? Send the survey to 500 people and hope to get responses from 50. Categorize the responses.
You want to learn the major benefits they find, the major problems they run into and the their perception of the product. Take the feedback from the somewhat disappointed group and give them more of what they want.
Other tips: Expect a 10-per-cent response; only ask questions that you need; don’t exceed 10 questions; start with an open response; categorize responses to see trends.
Lofgren said feedback forms at the bottom of every page of your website are also a good idea. They can be set up so that clicking on a question expands it into a form. He said they’re great for picking up little annoyances, and suggested paying attention to trends.
Taking the next step, there is good old fashioned talking one on one. New technology means this doesn’t necessarily have to be done in person, though. Alternatives include Skype and Google Hangouts.
Lofgren suggested getting a brief overview of who customers are, diving deep into their problems, and presenting a solution for feedback. Do at least 20 of these. Most people want to help, but you could offer discounts as an incentive.
