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  2. November 2016

November 2016

The Secret Agenda of a Facebook Quiz

[Commentary] For several years, a data firm eventually hired by the Trump campaign, Cambridge Analytica, has been using Facebook as a tool to build psychological profiles that represent some 230 million adult Americans. A spinoff of a British consulting company and sometime-defense contractor known for its counterterrorism “psy ops” work in Afghanistan, the firm does so by seeding the social network with personality quizzes.

Cambridge Analytica also gets a look at their personality scores and, thanks to Facebook, gains access to their profiles and real names. Cambridge Analytica worked on the “Leave” side of the Brexit campaign. In the United States it takes only Republicans as clients: Sen Ted Cruz (R-TX) in the primaries, President-elect Donald Trump in the general election. Cambridge is reportedly backed by Robert Mercer, a hedge fund billionaire and a major Republican donor; a key board member is Stephen K. Bannon, the head of Breitbart News who became Trump’s campaign chairman and is set to be his chief strategist in the White House.

[McKenzie Funk, an Open Society fellow, is a founding member of the journalism cooperative Deca.]

Auto Safety Regulators Seek a Driver Mode to Block Apps

Apple iPhones and other hand-held devices have long had an airplane mode that shuts off wireless communications to prevent interference with the vast electronics systems that control modern aircraft. Now federal auto safety regulators want makers of these devices to add a driver mode to modify or block certain apps and features to keep a driver’s attention on the road.

The initiative comes in the form of voluntary guidelines that will be issued Nov 23 by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. They arrive amid a spike in traffic fatalities in the last two years and increasing concerns about the distractions posed by smartphones and the many apps that Americans are using while behind the wheel. The guidelines call on electronics manufacturers like Apple and Samsung to design future operating systems that limit the functionality and simplify interfaces while a vehicle is in motion and to develop technology to identify when the devices are being used by a driver while driving. That would ensure the limits are placed on drivers and not other vehicle occupants.

What TV journalists did wrong — and the New York Times did right — in meeting with Trump

[Commentary] On Nov 21, some of the biggest names in TV news trooped into Trump Tower for an off-the-record meeting with the president-elect. The meeting was a huge success — for President-elect Donald Trump. The result for Trump: He once again was able to use the media as his favorite foil. Having a whipping boy is more important than ever now that the election is over and there is no Democratic opponent to malign at every turn.

The New York Times played it right. Despite a tweet attack from the president-elect, editors refused to go the off-the-record route with President-elect Trump, which was his preference, for obvious reasons — because he wanted again to control the story. Journalists, and their corporate bosses, shouldn’t allow themselves to be used as props in Trump’s never-ending theater.

The Cure for Fake News Is Worse Than the Disease

[Commentary] Since the election, our fussing over “fake news” has ballooned into a full-blown moral panic. A moral panic is the term sociologists give what the rest of us call a mass freak-out, and they are often typified by media-boosted scare campaigns that identify the “social deviants” (drug users, prostitutes, juvenile delinquents, gamblers, criminals, etc.) who are violating the norms practiced by regular people. Unchecked moral panics tend to do more damage than the deviants themselves if authorities and leaders—“moral entrepreneurs,” to use the lingo—overreact to whatever harm those deviants might be causing.

Once established to crush fake news, the Facebook mechanism could be repurposed to crush other types of information that might cause moral panic. This cure for fake news is worse than the disease.

Cinemoi Takes Aim at AT&T-Time Warner Merger

Daphna Ziman, president of Cinemoi, the women-owned high-end lifestyle programming network, took aim at the proposed AT&T-Time Warner merger. There is no Federal Communications Commission docket to post such comments in because the deal has yet to be filed with the commission, and there is even a question of whether it will have to be filed there at all. But the merger will definitely get Justice Department scrutiny at least, and FCC advice in the process at a minimum, if past is prologue (which it may or may not be in a Trump Administration). Whichever agency does the vetting, Ziman wants them to know she thinks the merger could adversely impact independent programmers.

"The lack of women and minority ownership is a threat to diversity of viewpoints and equality," she said. "Cinemoi looks forward to supporting the FCC and Congress in creating protections which address these concerns." "Gender diversity in media is absolutely critical for our democracy, never more glaring than now" she said. "This proposed merger could have serious public interest consequences."

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