This is signifcant.
A letter signed by nearly every major advertising trade group is criticizing Apple for its plan to use cookie-blocking technology in the updated version of its Safari web browser.
In the letter, first obtained by AdWeek, they argue that the change will not only hurt the user experience but will also “sabotage the economic model for the Internet.”
They say Apple is replacing existing user-controlled cookie preferences with its own set of “opaque and arbitrary standards for cookie handling.”
Why it matters: This is the start of a war between platforms and publishers and advertisers are getting caught up in it.
Tech companies are making these types of changes in response to backlash over advertising tactics that create a poor user experience — and now advertisers, who’ve become accustomed to using them for years, are fighting back.
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I’ve been banging on about this for months, and BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith captures it perfectly … “The bad new politics of big tech”:
Facebook should probably ease out of the business of bland background statements and awkward photo ops, and start worrying about congressional testimony. Amazon, whose market power doesn’t fall into the categories envisioned by pre-internet antitrust law, is developing a bipartisan lobby that wants to break it up. Google’s public affairs efforts are starting to look a bit like the oil industry’s.
These are the existential collisions with political power that can shake and redefine industries and their leaders, not the nickel-and-dime regulatory games Silicon Valley has played to date.
Be smart: This is the most important under-appreciated trend reshaping politics/tech/biz.
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Russian operatives with reported links to the Russian government remotely organized anti-immigrant rallies in the U.S. by using Facebook Events, The Daily Beast reports.
The events reportedly included an August 2016 anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rally in Idaho. The Facebook page behind that event had 133,000 followers when the social network shut it down last month.
When new Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi last week told the troops not to expect an IPO until at least 18 months from now, it sparked an interesting question: Should Lyft accelerate its own IPO plans, in order to gain a first-mover advantage?
Researchers at Zhejiang University were able to hack voice assistants like Alexa and Siri using frequencies too high for humans to hear that were still picked up by the devices.
Why it’s scary: Many “hey Siri” functions may be harmless, but the researchers could also tell an Amazon Echo to “unlock the back door,” redirect the navigation system of an Audi Q3, or install malware on an iPhone. The researchers used a smartphone with just $3 worth of extra hardware. With a little technological expertise, this method could easily be replicated.
Why it matters: Security experts worry the the so-called Internet of Things (including connected devices like digital assistants) are highly vulnerable to security breaches and other attacks not anticipated by manufacturers.
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Two-thirds (67%) of U.S. adults get news from social media sites, up from last year’s figure of 62%, according to a Pew Research Center study out today. But not all platforms are equal in delivering news to users:
Amazon’s search for a second headquarters has cities across the country scrambling to roll out the red carpet for the company, which promises to bring 50,000 new jobs and $5 billion investment — and immediate “tech hub” cred that so many communities covet.
Based on the criteria Amazon provided, as well as the tech giant’s political reality, we came up with a list of top five possible contenders to become Amazon’s second mothership.
The five cities: Denver, Chicago, Phoenix, Minneapolis and Detroit.
Our hope? Detroit.
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Yesterday’s N.Y. Times leads with an investigation by Scott Shane into “The Fake Americans Russia Created to Influence the Election”:
“The Russian information attack on the election did not stop with the hacking and leaking of Democratic emails … Far less splashy … was Russia’s experimentation on Facebook and Twitter.”
“On Twitter, as on Facebook, Russian fingerprints are on hundreds or thousands of fake accounts that regularly posted anti-Clinton messages. Many were automated Twitter accounts, called bots, that sometimes fired off identical messages seconds apart.”
Why it matters: “The fakery may have added only modestly to the din of genuine American voices in the pre-election melee, but it helped fuel a fire of anger and suspicion in a polarized country.”
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Black_Top_G.tiff HAND OUT PRESS PHOTOGRAPH. PROVIDED BY Kate Head