Bianca Bosker's Blog, page 3
June 4, 2014
The Startup Life In A Country That's Just Getting Smartphones
YANGON, Myanmar -- Tucked on the second floor of a turquoise building with peeling paint is a five-person tech startup that shares an office with Linn Construction, a property developer. Thar Htet, a cherubic 29-year-old Yangon native who dreams of Google-style success, does double duty as the founder of the app company, Zwenex, and a manager of the construction firm -- a family business that's currently helping to keep his tech venture afloat.
It's a telling sign of the state of the startup scene here in Yangon. Elsewhere, creating smartphone apps is largely considered the most nimble and least expensive path to riches. In Myanmar, which three years ago emerged from the 40-year yoke of a military dictatorship, it's the brick-and-mortar real estate business that has to bankroll the digital endeavor.
Myanmar typifies the kind of country that tech behemoths like Facebook and Google are plotting to connect to the Internet via drones and hot air balloons as they scour the world in search of more customers. Google alone is reportedly spending over $1 billion to launch a fleet of Internet-offering satellites. Just 1 percent of Myanmar's population had Internet access in 2012, the most recent year for which statistics are available. Its cell phone penetration rate, which reached 10 percent in 2012, is still one of the lowest in the world, below Cuba and Somalia.
But spreading the Facebooks, Googles and up-and-coming autochthonous apps through the unwired world is not only a problem of updating a nation's infrastructure, although it begins there. It's also a matter of rewiring the culture. Within Myanmar, Zwenex offers a glimpse at the kinds of challenges that stunted Internet access has created for local startups, problems that might not immediately be solved with faster wireless speeds.
Zwenex's office bears a passing resemblance to the headquarters of some Silicon Valley startups, only with more fluorescent lights and fewer beanbag chairs. At the far end of the room, Thar Htet has set up small a kitchenette with free coffee and biscuits. Past his glass-enclosed office and two desks for Linn Construction, four programmers -- all under 25, most hewing to a jeans-and-tees wardrobe -- sit at a row of desks mounted with black PCs. There, the similarities with Silicon Valley end.
The developers at Zwenex are not rock stars, ninjas, gurus or any of the other inflated nicknames the residents of Menlo Park are prone to give themselves. Their career path has made them oddities, even outcasts, among their relatives and friends.
Ye Lin Aung, a 22-year-old Zwenex programmer, said his aunt and uncle cut ties with him when he opted to study computers over medicine. Though the pair raised Ye Lin Aung while his parents were working overseas, they no longer speak to him.
"People's minds here are different. If you say you went to a computer university or technological university, they don't think it's very high," said Ye Lin Aung.
"My friends who are not from the IT fields, they don't know what I'm doing," another programmer agreed. "When I'm doing the big things, they see it as a small thing. They think, 'Oh, that is so easy.'"
Above: A row of developers at the Zwenex office.
Myanmar's aspiring developers face a lack of support not only from their friends, but also from the institutions that are meant to teach them the skills to code. Anemic Internet access has gone hand in hand with shoddy technical education at Myanmar's universities, which were deliberately gutted by Myanmar's military regime. Until recently, some computer studies programs lacked computers, forcing students to write their code longhand in notebooks. Even now, many technical schools are still without Internet access, according to Nay Phone Latt, the head of a nonprofit that seeks to provide computer training to Myanmar citizens.
"There might be thousands of students and tens of computers, some of which are not working well," said Thar Htet. "Some students, they maybe graduated from the computer school and they've never used email before."
Thar Htet says he trains all his employees, and that he does so out of necessity. He complains that on the whole, computer-savvy Yangoners are more interested in being "crackers," meaning they'd rather perfect their app-pirating skills than build new services from scratch. This points to another problem the Zwenexs of Myanmar face: With wireless speeds both slow and costly, buying black-market apps is far easier than downloading them, according to Thar Htet. Installing a single app over Yangon's sluggish wireless networks could take the better part of a day, and Myanmar's cell phone subscribers must pay for Internet access by the minute.
As an alternative, enterprising cell phone shops have developed a brisk business charging smartphone owners 2,000 to 5,000 Myanmar kyat (or $2 to $5) to install a complete package of pirated apps, from Facebook to Angry Birds HD. The app makers never see a cut. Another favorite tactic is to use Zapya, a file-sharing app, to transfer music, photos and other software between friends' phones for free.
Above: Zwenex founder Thar Htet at a desk in his startup's offices.
Thar Htet has numerous ideas for apps, all pegged to the specific needs of the Myanmar people. But he won't build them because he's not sure how to turn a profit from his creations. He showed off a PowerPoint deck with mockups of apps like MyanMalls (a way for the small merchants who sell online to market to their customers), MyanAir (an app for travel agents to keep track of Myanmar airlines' flight schedules, which change frequently) and MyanBuses (an app to check bus times).
"I have more than this number of ideas," he said. "Piracy is a big problem here. We build it, we start selling it, they crack it and then they start distributing it. On the Internet they're claiming to be heroes like Robin Hood, but that's really hurting us."
Htoo Myint Naung, the CEO of the Myanmar startup Technomation, has come up with a promising way to bypass the crackers: He pays the clerks at phone stores a commission when they install his apps on their customers' phones. Technomation has partnered with over 200 shops, which purchase a USB stick they can use a set number of times before paying Technomation to "refill" it with more licenses.
Yangon's technophiles are plowing ahead despite the challenges. BarCamp, a loose network of tech-focused conferences held in hundreds of cities around the world, had its largest turnout ever at an event hosted last year in Yangon. Over 6,000 people attended the Yangon BarCamp in 2013, double the turnout just two years before.
Ye Lin Aung, the developer whose aunt and uncle severed ties after his turn toward tech, is among those who will forge ahead with programming, even with the toll it's taken on his personal life.
"Maybe someday they will see me successful and maybe they'll talk to me again," he said of his relatives.
"If you own the Facebook, maybe their mind will change," offered Thar Htet.
"Yeah," said Ye Lin Aung. He paused and smiled. "I'll have their data."
It's a telling sign of the state of the startup scene here in Yangon. Elsewhere, creating smartphone apps is largely considered the most nimble and least expensive path to riches. In Myanmar, which three years ago emerged from the 40-year yoke of a military dictatorship, it's the brick-and-mortar real estate business that has to bankroll the digital endeavor.
Myanmar typifies the kind of country that tech behemoths like Facebook and Google are plotting to connect to the Internet via drones and hot air balloons as they scour the world in search of more customers. Google alone is reportedly spending over $1 billion to launch a fleet of Internet-offering satellites. Just 1 percent of Myanmar's population had Internet access in 2012, the most recent year for which statistics are available. Its cell phone penetration rate, which reached 10 percent in 2012, is still one of the lowest in the world, below Cuba and Somalia.
But spreading the Facebooks, Googles and up-and-coming autochthonous apps through the unwired world is not only a problem of updating a nation's infrastructure, although it begins there. It's also a matter of rewiring the culture. Within Myanmar, Zwenex offers a glimpse at the kinds of challenges that stunted Internet access has created for local startups, problems that might not immediately be solved with faster wireless speeds.
Zwenex's office bears a passing resemblance to the headquarters of some Silicon Valley startups, only with more fluorescent lights and fewer beanbag chairs. At the far end of the room, Thar Htet has set up small a kitchenette with free coffee and biscuits. Past his glass-enclosed office and two desks for Linn Construction, four programmers -- all under 25, most hewing to a jeans-and-tees wardrobe -- sit at a row of desks mounted with black PCs. There, the similarities with Silicon Valley end.
The developers at Zwenex are not rock stars, ninjas, gurus or any of the other inflated nicknames the residents of Menlo Park are prone to give themselves. Their career path has made them oddities, even outcasts, among their relatives and friends.
Ye Lin Aung, a 22-year-old Zwenex programmer, said his aunt and uncle cut ties with him when he opted to study computers over medicine. Though the pair raised Ye Lin Aung while his parents were working overseas, they no longer speak to him.
"People's minds here are different. If you say you went to a computer university or technological university, they don't think it's very high," said Ye Lin Aung.
"My friends who are not from the IT fields, they don't know what I'm doing," another programmer agreed. "When I'm doing the big things, they see it as a small thing. They think, 'Oh, that is so easy.'"
Above: A row of developers at the Zwenex office.
Myanmar's aspiring developers face a lack of support not only from their friends, but also from the institutions that are meant to teach them the skills to code. Anemic Internet access has gone hand in hand with shoddy technical education at Myanmar's universities, which were deliberately gutted by Myanmar's military regime. Until recently, some computer studies programs lacked computers, forcing students to write their code longhand in notebooks. Even now, many technical schools are still without Internet access, according to Nay Phone Latt, the head of a nonprofit that seeks to provide computer training to Myanmar citizens.
"There might be thousands of students and tens of computers, some of which are not working well," said Thar Htet. "Some students, they maybe graduated from the computer school and they've never used email before."
Thar Htet says he trains all his employees, and that he does so out of necessity. He complains that on the whole, computer-savvy Yangoners are more interested in being "crackers," meaning they'd rather perfect their app-pirating skills than build new services from scratch. This points to another problem the Zwenexs of Myanmar face: With wireless speeds both slow and costly, buying black-market apps is far easier than downloading them, according to Thar Htet. Installing a single app over Yangon's sluggish wireless networks could take the better part of a day, and Myanmar's cell phone subscribers must pay for Internet access by the minute.
As an alternative, enterprising cell phone shops have developed a brisk business charging smartphone owners 2,000 to 5,000 Myanmar kyat (or $2 to $5) to install a complete package of pirated apps, from Facebook to Angry Birds HD. The app makers never see a cut. Another favorite tactic is to use Zapya, a file-sharing app, to transfer music, photos and other software between friends' phones for free.
Above: Zwenex founder Thar Htet at a desk in his startup's offices.
Thar Htet has numerous ideas for apps, all pegged to the specific needs of the Myanmar people. But he won't build them because he's not sure how to turn a profit from his creations. He showed off a PowerPoint deck with mockups of apps like MyanMalls (a way for the small merchants who sell online to market to their customers), MyanAir (an app for travel agents to keep track of Myanmar airlines' flight schedules, which change frequently) and MyanBuses (an app to check bus times).
"I have more than this number of ideas," he said. "Piracy is a big problem here. We build it, we start selling it, they crack it and then they start distributing it. On the Internet they're claiming to be heroes like Robin Hood, but that's really hurting us."
Htoo Myint Naung, the CEO of the Myanmar startup Technomation, has come up with a promising way to bypass the crackers: He pays the clerks at phone stores a commission when they install his apps on their customers' phones. Technomation has partnered with over 200 shops, which purchase a USB stick they can use a set number of times before paying Technomation to "refill" it with more licenses.
Yangon's technophiles are plowing ahead despite the challenges. BarCamp, a loose network of tech-focused conferences held in hundreds of cities around the world, had its largest turnout ever at an event hosted last year in Yangon. Over 6,000 people attended the Yangon BarCamp in 2013, double the turnout just two years before.
Ye Lin Aung, the developer whose aunt and uncle severed ties after his turn toward tech, is among those who will forge ahead with programming, even with the toll it's taken on his personal life.
"Maybe someday they will see me successful and maybe they'll talk to me again," he said of his relatives.
"If you own the Facebook, maybe their mind will change," offered Thar Htet.
"Yeah," said Ye Lin Aung. He paused and smiled. "I'll have their data."
May 20, 2014
We've Found The One Man Who Thinks Google Glass' Look Can Work To His Advantage
NEW YORK CITY -- Language undergoes strange mutations inside the airy Chelsea loft Google refers to as “Basecamp.” People who’ve paid $1,500 for Google’s prototype head computer are “Explorers.” At a gathering of Explorers at Basecamp last Thursday, attendees didn’t exchange business cards, but “dead trees.” They nodded at observations like, “He’s one of the most intelligent people on the planet even without his augmentations” or “A website is still a barrier -- you can't see the other side.”
Ron Khordi, one of the Explorers at the Google event, offered another unusual permutation of the English language when he described the bulky headband over his nose as an “elegant device.”
Glass has been pitched as everything from a teaching aid to a tool for runners. But not even Google is so bold as to claim it’s chic. Though Khordi wouldn’t consider Glass a stylish fashion accessory, he’s confident the Star Trek look of his head-mounted gadget offers a marketing advantage that will win over strangers who visit the website for his gem-sourcing company, Diamond Concierge Service
“It just looks cool,” said Khordi, pointing to the gadget over his eyebrows. “It’s hands free. It’s a very elegant device. It’s on my head.”
In a sea of people wearing strange things on their faces, Khordi boasted the strangest. He had not one, but two pieces of glass dangling over his right eyeball. One was put there by Google, which sold Khordi the Glass headset in January. The second was a clip-on Bausch & Lomb jeweler’s loupe Khordi had attached to Glass with stainless steel rods and some protruding screws.
Khordi shows of his customized pair of Glass.
The stereotype of the Silicon Valley-obsessed "Glasshole" secretly snapping photos with a wink of the eye doesn't apply to Khordi. When he’s not an Explorer, Khordi is a second-generation jeweler who, in his words, has “always been exploring how to use technology to disrupt the jewelry industry.” In practical terms, that means Khordi's Diamond Concierge Service uses Glass to video chat from jeweler's stores and film the gems Khordi finds for his clients. His site features colorful photos of Khordi wearing Glass while peering into shop windows. It boasts that his is “the first jewelry company to be a Glass Explorer.”
Sure, Khordi said, he could film the diamonds with his Samsung smartphone. But how bizarre would that look?
“Imagine that if I had this,” he said, shaking his phone. “That looks weird! It’s kinda creepy almost! You’re taking a phone and photographing into someone’s windows!"
Because it’s hands-free and still a futuristic-looking novelty, Glass is “very appealing,” said Khordi. In the diamond business, "there's no difference between me and anyone else. It's how you present yourself."
“That’s a good enterprise case,” murmured a Google spokeswoman during last week's event.
"You should be recording this," said Khordi, with a nod toward the Glass on my face. "You don't have to write this. What are you doing? You're wearing Glass! Come on!"
The Explorers hadn’t really been invited to Basecamp to discuss Glass' enterprise cases. Google had planned the afternoon to show off Glass apps that would make the device a handy travel accessory. At one station, a Googler demonstrated Glass’ translation skills by pointing Explorers' face-cameras toward photos of street signs. After several minutes of installing and loading software, Glass was able to reveal that the Russian word next to the symbol “R/X” meant “pharmacy.”
The Explorers were more interested in talking business.
“If you go to the Glass app store, there are two apps for your golf score, two apps for cycling, three apps for cooking. Where's the to-do list? Where's the app for remembering what you're supposed to be doing?” said a self-described "hacker-in-chief," who, in addition to Glass, wore a black plastic contraption with levers and dials strapped to his arm. “Why does Google want to distract us? All I can say is, Google is more focused on joys, toys, fun.”
Khordi complained that Google had pulled Glass’ video-calling app less than a month before, making it almost impossible for him to stream live video to his clients.
“My entire business model depended on this,” Khordi said.
“Listen, we’re perfecting it," the Google spokeswoman told him.
The "hacker-in-chief" shows off a wearable computer he calls the "smartwatch" that he built himself.
Khordi has also relied on Glass to reply to clients in a matter of seconds. When someone contacts Khordi through his homepage, he gets a text message with that person's details delivered to his phone. Next, “that text is Bluetoothed to Glass up to my face,” Khordi said, so he can call the customer before she’s even left his page.
“It’s happened that people pick up the phone and they’re laughing. They’re like, ‘How’d you get to me? I’m on your website,’” he said.
“That’s an interesting use case,” another Google employee mused.
I ask Khordi why he couldn't just read the text message on his phone. The optics of that aren't ideal, either, he explained.
"Is this nice?" he asked, holding up his smartphone so it blocked eye contact. He jabbed a finger toward the double-decker pieces of glass over his right eye. "I just got a text for a $10,000 lead."
Really?
"It doesn’t matter. You have no idea," he said. "It’s a subtle difference, but diamonds are all about the subtlety. The subtlety makes or breaks the product."
Ron Khordi, one of the Explorers at the Google event, offered another unusual permutation of the English language when he described the bulky headband over his nose as an “elegant device.”
Glass has been pitched as everything from a teaching aid to a tool for runners. But not even Google is so bold as to claim it’s chic. Though Khordi wouldn’t consider Glass a stylish fashion accessory, he’s confident the Star Trek look of his head-mounted gadget offers a marketing advantage that will win over strangers who visit the website for his gem-sourcing company, Diamond Concierge Service
“It just looks cool,” said Khordi, pointing to the gadget over his eyebrows. “It’s hands free. It’s a very elegant device. It’s on my head.”
In a sea of people wearing strange things on their faces, Khordi boasted the strangest. He had not one, but two pieces of glass dangling over his right eyeball. One was put there by Google, which sold Khordi the Glass headset in January. The second was a clip-on Bausch & Lomb jeweler’s loupe Khordi had attached to Glass with stainless steel rods and some protruding screws.
Khordi shows of his customized pair of Glass.
The stereotype of the Silicon Valley-obsessed "Glasshole" secretly snapping photos with a wink of the eye doesn't apply to Khordi. When he’s not an Explorer, Khordi is a second-generation jeweler who, in his words, has “always been exploring how to use technology to disrupt the jewelry industry.” In practical terms, that means Khordi's Diamond Concierge Service uses Glass to video chat from jeweler's stores and film the gems Khordi finds for his clients. His site features colorful photos of Khordi wearing Glass while peering into shop windows. It boasts that his is “the first jewelry company to be a Glass Explorer.”
Sure, Khordi said, he could film the diamonds with his Samsung smartphone. But how bizarre would that look?
“Imagine that if I had this,” he said, shaking his phone. “That looks weird! It’s kinda creepy almost! You’re taking a phone and photographing into someone’s windows!"
Because it’s hands-free and still a futuristic-looking novelty, Glass is “very appealing,” said Khordi. In the diamond business, "there's no difference between me and anyone else. It's how you present yourself."
“That’s a good enterprise case,” murmured a Google spokeswoman during last week's event.
"You should be recording this," said Khordi, with a nod toward the Glass on my face. "You don't have to write this. What are you doing? You're wearing Glass! Come on!"
The Explorers hadn’t really been invited to Basecamp to discuss Glass' enterprise cases. Google had planned the afternoon to show off Glass apps that would make the device a handy travel accessory. At one station, a Googler demonstrated Glass’ translation skills by pointing Explorers' face-cameras toward photos of street signs. After several minutes of installing and loading software, Glass was able to reveal that the Russian word next to the symbol “R/X” meant “pharmacy.”
The Explorers were more interested in talking business.
“If you go to the Glass app store, there are two apps for your golf score, two apps for cycling, three apps for cooking. Where's the to-do list? Where's the app for remembering what you're supposed to be doing?” said a self-described "hacker-in-chief," who, in addition to Glass, wore a black plastic contraption with levers and dials strapped to his arm. “Why does Google want to distract us? All I can say is, Google is more focused on joys, toys, fun.”
Khordi complained that Google had pulled Glass’ video-calling app less than a month before, making it almost impossible for him to stream live video to his clients.
“My entire business model depended on this,” Khordi said.
“Listen, we’re perfecting it," the Google spokeswoman told him.
The "hacker-in-chief" shows off a wearable computer he calls the "smartwatch" that he built himself.
Khordi has also relied on Glass to reply to clients in a matter of seconds. When someone contacts Khordi through his homepage, he gets a text message with that person's details delivered to his phone. Next, “that text is Bluetoothed to Glass up to my face,” Khordi said, so he can call the customer before she’s even left his page.
“It’s happened that people pick up the phone and they’re laughing. They’re like, ‘How’d you get to me? I’m on your website,’” he said.
“That’s an interesting use case,” another Google employee mused.
I ask Khordi why he couldn't just read the text message on his phone. The optics of that aren't ideal, either, he explained.
"Is this nice?" he asked, holding up his smartphone so it blocked eye contact. He jabbed a finger toward the double-decker pieces of glass over his right eye. "I just got a text for a $10,000 lead."
Really?
"It doesn’t matter. You have no idea," he said. "It’s a subtle difference, but diamonds are all about the subtlety. The subtlety makes or breaks the product."
May 14, 2014
Erasing Your Engagement From The Internet Is Impossible -- I Know, I Tried
No one is more excited about my wedding than Facebook. Or possibly Google.
As they seem to see it, since getting engaged I’ve become an impressionable ATM from which their advertisers expect to withdraw some $30,000 -- the average price of an American wedding, minus honeymoon, according to the wedding industry. The marital industrial complex has transformed my Internet into a Bridal Expo, with ads for my “dream registry” over here, pitches for “Wedding Paper Divas” all up in my News Feed and offers for “bridal fitness training” hovering above my emails. TheKnot.com checks in more often than my parents. Macy’s, which I never even told about my marriage, tracked me down to my apartment to offer discounts on bridesmaid gear.
Call me rain on a pastel-colored parade, but I still consider marriage more of a major life event than an excuse for a shopping spree. So it felt intrusive to have a personal affair exploited by companies I’d never heard of (and yet mysteriously knew all about my plans). Inspired by Princeton University professor Janet Vertesi’s attempts to hide her pregnancy from the big data overlords, I embarked on my own experiment to see if I could make the Internet forget something I’d already shared: my engagement.
A glimpse at the wedding ads in my Facebook News Feed.
I had a few rules. I didn’t want to opt out of targeted ads altogether, which would have meant more spammy offers for quick credit checks. And I didn’t just want to eliminate the wedding ads, which, although feasible, doesn’t erase the underlying information. I wanted selective Internet amnesia, which EU courts this week ruled its citizens have a right to.
I defined success as deleting any data that could tie me back to someone interested in weddings.
I not only failed miserably, but the Internet -- and its shady network of behind-the-scenes stalkers -- forced me to become a fraud. Obfuscation, I learned, is now the closest thing that passes for privacy.
Rewind to the days before I became a online-dating, singles-trolling con. I started the experiment by identifying three key camps that knew about my nuptials. There was Facebook, which I told months ago in part by switching my profile to “engaged.” (I never “liked” any wedding-related pages or installed marriage-y apps.) Google knew from my emails and browsing activity. There were also the wedding services I’d signed up for -- David’s Bridal, Bloomingdale’s, TheKnot.com -- along with an untold number of anonymous “trusted” “partners” who’d been given my data.
So how to undo the deed? I called privacy experts who told me to clear my browser’s cookies (to force Google to forget I’d hung out on wedding sites); change my Facebook status back to "single"; and delete wedding-related accounts opened with my primary email address (which made it easy for data brokers to pin me as a bride). To be sure I wouldn't leak more evidence, I also installed a browser extension that could mask the IP address of my searches; downloaded another tool to stop companies from tracking my whereabouts online; and swore off sharing my phone number, email or zip code when paying at stores.
Sarah Downey, one of the experts I consulted, warned me that data brokers use the details we share at the cash register to organize and correlate the data sets they can access -- which, in practical terms, means a company like Facebook could link the online me to the offline me who registered at Crate and Barrel.
Ads from the top of my Gmail account.
The tricky thing about hiding a wedding is that unless things are going seriously wrong, it’s not easy asking your fiancé if you can be single again.
“Just want you to know I’m breaking up with you on Facebook,” I chatted my future spouse one afternoon at work. I also requested his Facebook password and typed six words I’d never planned on saying to my significant other of six years: “I need you to be single too.”
Only Facebook knew better. Even with my status back to “single,” I saw just as many honeymoon ads as before. (“Maybe they’re trying to guilt trip you,” suggested my fiancé, who, now that I think about it, might have been doing the same.) I asked a Facebook spokesman whether the social network’s servers could just forget the whole “betrothed” episode. Short answer, no -- only if I deleted my account. Long answer, neither would Facebook’s advertisers. Brands, I learned, can target people who’ve switched their profile to “engaged” as much as a year after the update -- and even after the betrothed changes their status back to “separated” or "single.”
The more I tried to claw back my data, the more places I found it had traveled. TheKnot would scrub me from its servers if I deleted my account, but an untold number of “wedding-related product and service providers” -- presumably the caterers, travel agents and makeup artists who’d been emailing me -- already knew about the “I do.” TheKnot.com would not provide a list of companies that had received my data.
“Many of our brides find value in third-party companies approaching them with additional wedding-related information and services,” said a TheKnot.com spokeswoman, who asked, un-ironically, that I not share her name.
David’s Bridal, a store I’d thought dealt in dresses and not data, was also a snitch. I had no clue when I tried on its overgrown lace formations that I’d unwittingly consented to the terms of David’s Bridal’s 5,355-word privacy policy. It’s a document ten times longer than the Bill of Rights, and it grants the dressmaker the freedom to “share, sell, trade, or rent” my personal data to “other third parties for direct marketing purposes.” Which third parties? A David’s Bridal spokeswoman wouldn’t say.
I had a hunch that the incriminating marriage evidence had traveled to the coffers of data brokers like Epsilon and DataLogix, which use those particulars to help brands zero in on specific groups of shoppers online (brides, expecting mothers, potentially even rape victims). But where to start? Facebook alone has partnered with nearly 50 ad networks and data brokers that Zuckerberg uses to suck in more information about Facebook's members -- and help brands find us. Though grabby with our info, I found the data brokers I looked into -- Acxiom, Epsilon, RapLeaf -- were stingy about sharing the contents of my personal file. Even if they would erase my info (doubtful), I couldn’t get answers when it came to what they knew about me.
In case you’re wondering what sort of psychopath tries to hide her wedding, let me be clear: My frustration is not that people know I’m getting married. What drives me nuts is that I can’t control who knows. "Personal information" no longer refers to the intimate details we share at our discretion; it's come to mean any information about a person. And everyone gets access to it.
Helen Nissenbaum, a professor of media, culture and communication at New York University, sympathized with my complaint when I called her to discuss how I could dis-engage online.
“The problem with the way we think about privacy at the moment is it’s all or nothing,” she told me. “We either release the information or we don’t. And once we release it, well, tough luck.”
Right about the time I was ready to admit defeat, Nissenbaum and I came up with a plan: If you can’t delete, deceive.
While other brides four months away from “I do” would be selecting flower arrangements, I threw myself into joining as many online dating sites as I could find. From LDSSingles (“seek and ye shall find”) to Match.com, I was, from the Internet’s point of view, single and very ready to mingle.
I tried, again, to confuse Facebook by connecting my profile to dating apps like Tinder, Momo, Hinge, Zoosk, IvyConnect, HowAboutWe and Sway. I sent myself a very single-sounding email with words like “online dating,” “breakup,” “single” and “find love” spelled out for the benefit of Gmail’s prying eyes. I tracked down a list of the top online dating-related search terms and -- with Google’s tracking tools back on and fully enabled -- queried the search engine for the top sixteen phrases (I threw in things like “OKCupid” and “eHarmony” for good measure).
In less than 50 minutes, I’d convinced Google to add “Dating and Personals” to my list of interests, which is compiled based on the sites I visit and determines what ads I'll see. (You can see what Google thinks it knows about you here.)
Just as quickly, the telepathic ads above Gmail switched from “Discover Romance in Maui” to “Is He A Cheater?” as Google pushed background checks in place of sundrenched honeymoons.
I have no clue what the data brokers now think about me. Then again, I never did. I can only hope that as you read this, a puzzled piece of software is frantically updating a “Bianca Bosker” entry as it traces my email to the sketchy singles sites I gave. Sure, that means I'm stuck deleting dozens of emails with crude come-ons from Romeos like “Ehhhh” and “BKFiness.” But I take some comfort in thinking that if I haven’t purged my data, at least the people who peddle it are very, very confused. I've gone from definitely being a bride to possibly being engaged, single and mentally unsound.
And Facebook? In what may be a testament to the social network’s unshakeable ability to know us and sell us, Facebook still hasn’t fallen for anything.
I hadn’t thought it possible, but I’m actually seeing more wedding ads from more wedding retailers than when I started Operation Disengage. A new one showed up yesterday. It was David’s Bridal, with an offer for invitations.
As they seem to see it, since getting engaged I’ve become an impressionable ATM from which their advertisers expect to withdraw some $30,000 -- the average price of an American wedding, minus honeymoon, according to the wedding industry. The marital industrial complex has transformed my Internet into a Bridal Expo, with ads for my “dream registry” over here, pitches for “Wedding Paper Divas” all up in my News Feed and offers for “bridal fitness training” hovering above my emails. TheKnot.com checks in more often than my parents. Macy’s, which I never even told about my marriage, tracked me down to my apartment to offer discounts on bridesmaid gear.
Call me rain on a pastel-colored parade, but I still consider marriage more of a major life event than an excuse for a shopping spree. So it felt intrusive to have a personal affair exploited by companies I’d never heard of (and yet mysteriously knew all about my plans). Inspired by Princeton University professor Janet Vertesi’s attempts to hide her pregnancy from the big data overlords, I embarked on my own experiment to see if I could make the Internet forget something I’d already shared: my engagement.
A glimpse at the wedding ads in my Facebook News Feed.
I had a few rules. I didn’t want to opt out of targeted ads altogether, which would have meant more spammy offers for quick credit checks. And I didn’t just want to eliminate the wedding ads, which, although feasible, doesn’t erase the underlying information. I wanted selective Internet amnesia, which EU courts this week ruled its citizens have a right to.
I defined success as deleting any data that could tie me back to someone interested in weddings.
I not only failed miserably, but the Internet -- and its shady network of behind-the-scenes stalkers -- forced me to become a fraud. Obfuscation, I learned, is now the closest thing that passes for privacy.
Rewind to the days before I became a online-dating, singles-trolling con. I started the experiment by identifying three key camps that knew about my nuptials. There was Facebook, which I told months ago in part by switching my profile to “engaged.” (I never “liked” any wedding-related pages or installed marriage-y apps.) Google knew from my emails and browsing activity. There were also the wedding services I’d signed up for -- David’s Bridal, Bloomingdale’s, TheKnot.com -- along with an untold number of anonymous “trusted” “partners” who’d been given my data.
So how to undo the deed? I called privacy experts who told me to clear my browser’s cookies (to force Google to forget I’d hung out on wedding sites); change my Facebook status back to "single"; and delete wedding-related accounts opened with my primary email address (which made it easy for data brokers to pin me as a bride). To be sure I wouldn't leak more evidence, I also installed a browser extension that could mask the IP address of my searches; downloaded another tool to stop companies from tracking my whereabouts online; and swore off sharing my phone number, email or zip code when paying at stores.
Sarah Downey, one of the experts I consulted, warned me that data brokers use the details we share at the cash register to organize and correlate the data sets they can access -- which, in practical terms, means a company like Facebook could link the online me to the offline me who registered at Crate and Barrel.
Ads from the top of my Gmail account.
The tricky thing about hiding a wedding is that unless things are going seriously wrong, it’s not easy asking your fiancé if you can be single again.
“Just want you to know I’m breaking up with you on Facebook,” I chatted my future spouse one afternoon at work. I also requested his Facebook password and typed six words I’d never planned on saying to my significant other of six years: “I need you to be single too.”
Only Facebook knew better. Even with my status back to “single,” I saw just as many honeymoon ads as before. (“Maybe they’re trying to guilt trip you,” suggested my fiancé, who, now that I think about it, might have been doing the same.) I asked a Facebook spokesman whether the social network’s servers could just forget the whole “betrothed” episode. Short answer, no -- only if I deleted my account. Long answer, neither would Facebook’s advertisers. Brands, I learned, can target people who’ve switched their profile to “engaged” as much as a year after the update -- and even after the betrothed changes their status back to “separated” or "single.”
The more I tried to claw back my data, the more places I found it had traveled. TheKnot would scrub me from its servers if I deleted my account, but an untold number of “wedding-related product and service providers” -- presumably the caterers, travel agents and makeup artists who’d been emailing me -- already knew about the “I do.” TheKnot.com would not provide a list of companies that had received my data.
“Many of our brides find value in third-party companies approaching them with additional wedding-related information and services,” said a TheKnot.com spokeswoman, who asked, un-ironically, that I not share her name.
David’s Bridal, a store I’d thought dealt in dresses and not data, was also a snitch. I had no clue when I tried on its overgrown lace formations that I’d unwittingly consented to the terms of David’s Bridal’s 5,355-word privacy policy. It’s a document ten times longer than the Bill of Rights, and it grants the dressmaker the freedom to “share, sell, trade, or rent” my personal data to “other third parties for direct marketing purposes.” Which third parties? A David’s Bridal spokeswoman wouldn’t say.
I had a hunch that the incriminating marriage evidence had traveled to the coffers of data brokers like Epsilon and DataLogix, which use those particulars to help brands zero in on specific groups of shoppers online (brides, expecting mothers, potentially even rape victims). But where to start? Facebook alone has partnered with nearly 50 ad networks and data brokers that Zuckerberg uses to suck in more information about Facebook's members -- and help brands find us. Though grabby with our info, I found the data brokers I looked into -- Acxiom, Epsilon, RapLeaf -- were stingy about sharing the contents of my personal file. Even if they would erase my info (doubtful), I couldn’t get answers when it came to what they knew about me.
In case you’re wondering what sort of psychopath tries to hide her wedding, let me be clear: My frustration is not that people know I’m getting married. What drives me nuts is that I can’t control who knows. "Personal information" no longer refers to the intimate details we share at our discretion; it's come to mean any information about a person. And everyone gets access to it.
Helen Nissenbaum, a professor of media, culture and communication at New York University, sympathized with my complaint when I called her to discuss how I could dis-engage online.
“The problem with the way we think about privacy at the moment is it’s all or nothing,” she told me. “We either release the information or we don’t. And once we release it, well, tough luck.”
Right about the time I was ready to admit defeat, Nissenbaum and I came up with a plan: If you can’t delete, deceive.
While other brides four months away from “I do” would be selecting flower arrangements, I threw myself into joining as many online dating sites as I could find. From LDSSingles (“seek and ye shall find”) to Match.com, I was, from the Internet’s point of view, single and very ready to mingle.
I tried, again, to confuse Facebook by connecting my profile to dating apps like Tinder, Momo, Hinge, Zoosk, IvyConnect, HowAboutWe and Sway. I sent myself a very single-sounding email with words like “online dating,” “breakup,” “single” and “find love” spelled out for the benefit of Gmail’s prying eyes. I tracked down a list of the top online dating-related search terms and -- with Google’s tracking tools back on and fully enabled -- queried the search engine for the top sixteen phrases (I threw in things like “OKCupid” and “eHarmony” for good measure).
In less than 50 minutes, I’d convinced Google to add “Dating and Personals” to my list of interests, which is compiled based on the sites I visit and determines what ads I'll see. (You can see what Google thinks it knows about you here.)
Just as quickly, the telepathic ads above Gmail switched from “Discover Romance in Maui” to “Is He A Cheater?” as Google pushed background checks in place of sundrenched honeymoons.
I have no clue what the data brokers now think about me. Then again, I never did. I can only hope that as you read this, a puzzled piece of software is frantically updating a “Bianca Bosker” entry as it traces my email to the sketchy singles sites I gave. Sure, that means I'm stuck deleting dozens of emails with crude come-ons from Romeos like “Ehhhh” and “BKFiness.” But I take some comfort in thinking that if I haven’t purged my data, at least the people who peddle it are very, very confused. I've gone from definitely being a bride to possibly being engaged, single and mentally unsound.
And Facebook? In what may be a testament to the social network’s unshakeable ability to know us and sell us, Facebook still hasn’t fallen for anything.
I hadn’t thought it possible, but I’m actually seeing more wedding ads from more wedding retailers than when I started Operation Disengage. A new one showed up yesterday. It was David’s Bridal, with an offer for invitations.
May 11, 2014
Como as #hashtags se tornaram o punho erguido da pontuação
As hashtags surgiram como uma maneira de fazer buscas por tuítes sobre temas específicos (#socialmedia, ou #mídiasocial), converteram-se em ferramenta para acrescentar nuances (#ohyeah, ou #éissoaí) e agora estão surgindo em lugares onde aparentemente não têm função prática nenhuma: em camisetas, capas de livros, bolsas e placas. Não podemos clicar sobre objetos físicos. Mas colocamos hashtags sobre eles, mesmo assim.
Foi o que fez a primeira-dama dos EUA, Michelle Obama, esta semana quando tuitou uma foto dela mesma segurando uma folha de papel com as palavras escritas à mão “#Bring Back Our Girls” (Traga Nossas Meninas de Volta). Referência às mais de 200 meninas sequestradas por um grupo extremista na Nigéria, a frase poderia ter sido simplesmente “Bring Back Our Girls”. Em vez disso, foi iniciada com o símbolo #.
O fato de a primeira-dama americana ter escolhido esse prefixo mostra que a hashtag já assumiu mais uma função desde que estreou, sete anos atrás: é um comando. As quatro linhas perpendiculares viraram uma recomendação resumida: “compartilhe isto, agora”.
As hashtags transformam uma frase num slogan. Pense nelas como o punho erguido da pontuação.
No Brasil, um exemplo dessa nova tendência foi o protesto online intitulado #EuNãoMereçoSerEstuprada, organizado pela jornalista Nana Queiroz, no final de março. Veja ao final deste post galeria de fotos postadas por mulheres de todo o país em apoio à campanha.
Outro exemplo recente foi a campanha #SomosTodosMacacos, iniciada pelo jogador Neymar em apoio a seu colega Daniel Alves.
“A hashtag diz: ‘Isto é algo para o qual você precisa voltar sua atenção agora, neste momento’, e ‘isto é algo com que você pode se envolver e pelo qual pode mostrar seu apoio’”, comentou Ruth Page, professora da Universidade de Leicester que pesquisa mídias sociais e linguagem. “É como um chamado à ação.”
A ascensão da hashtag como comando coincide com o avanço da cerquilha (o símbolo #) para fora dos textos digitados, invadindo imagens, vídeos e até objetos, onde não cumpre finalidade técnica nenhuma. (Clique sobre a palavra digitada #cappuccino” em quase qualquer site de mídia social, e você verá todos os outros posts que incluem o termo. Clique numa imagem contendo “#cappuccino” e não acontece nada.)
Vale notar que “#BringBackOurGirls” não apenas foi digitado em mais de 2 milhões de tuítes como foi estampado sobre milhares de fotos compartilhadas no Instagram. Sophia Amoruso, fundadora do NastyGal, escolheu uma hashtag para ser o título de seu livro (em papel), “#GIRLBOSS”. E mais de metade dos anunciantes no Super Bowl, nos EUA, deste ano incluíram hashtags em seus comerciais –uma dica não muito sutil de que devemos não apenas ver os slogans deles, mas repeti-los.
Essas hashtags fotografadas e filmadas mostram que as pessoas hoje aderem ao # como não apenas como uma maneira de organizar informações, mas, muito mais, como instrução para divulgá-las.
A hashtag converteu-se numa indicação subconsciente de “repetir”, graças em parte à sua associação inicial com a política e os “trending topics” (os assuntos mais comentados).
“Pode haver dois antecedentes históricos que convergem na sloganização das hashtags: por um lado, temos o uso das hashtags para falar de causas políticas no Twitter, e por outro, há a utilização de hashtags para levar temas a ser mais comentados”, disse Susan Herring, professora de ciência da informação e linguística na Universidade Indiana, aludindo à lista de “trending topics” do Twitter, que desde o início se baseou extensamente em termos assinalados com hashtags.
Embora o primeiro hashtag no Twitter tenha sido usado em conexão com um encontro de especialistas em tecnologia (#barcamp), Herring observou que as hashtags ganharam reconhecimento amplo durante as manifestações por mais democracia no Irã em 2009, quando termos como “#IranElection” e “Neda” proliferaram no Twitter.
E, desde o início, o “hash”, ou #, foi associado a um esforço para divulgar alguma coisa: “Supunha-se que as hashtags eram clicáveis, logo, difusíveis, e a razão pela qual vocês os usava, pelo menos parte do tempo, era que queria criar um ‘trending topic’”, ela pontuou.
O achatamento do texto que ocorre online também ajudou a dar lugar à função “sloganizadora” da hashtag. Numa era anterior, reconhecíamos um slogan pelo modo como era escrito sobre cartazes, buttons ou outdoors. Havia pontos de exclamação. Letras garrafais e coloridas. Imagens do Tio Sam apontando. Hoje, temos 140 caracteres que não mudam de aparência, não importa o que escrevemos. “Quando apenas digitamos no Twitter ou no Instagram, não temos tanta variação tipográfica disponível”, disse Herring.
Tuitar “We can do it” (nós podemos fazer!) não transmite a mesma força do pôster original de Rosie the Riveter, da Segunda Guerra Mundial. A frase pode ser entendia como referência a conseguir mais seguidores, como palavra de ordem dos torcedores de um time de futebol ou como campanha de levantamento de fundos –ou como todas essas alternativas, segundo alguns tuítes recentes. Mas com “#WeCanDoIt”, temos as sementes de um movimento.
Ou talvez você só tenha um slogan que chama a atenção. É possível que hashtags como "#BringBackOurGirls" ou "#IAmBradleyManning" (Eu sou Bradley Manning) resultem em mudanças concretas de políticas. Mas parece que, na maioria dos casos, as hashtags são mais eficazes para difundir hashtags, e não tanto para desencadear ações offline. Quem sabe você possa iniciar uma hashtag que resolva esse problema.
Foi o que fez a primeira-dama dos EUA, Michelle Obama, esta semana quando tuitou uma foto dela mesma segurando uma folha de papel com as palavras escritas à mão “#Bring Back Our Girls” (Traga Nossas Meninas de Volta). Referência às mais de 200 meninas sequestradas por um grupo extremista na Nigéria, a frase poderia ter sido simplesmente “Bring Back Our Girls”. Em vez disso, foi iniciada com o símbolo #.
Our prayers are with the missing Nigerian girls and their families. It's time to #BringBackOurGirls. -mo pic.twitter.com/glDKDotJRt
— The First Lady (@FLOTUS) May 7, 2014
O fato de a primeira-dama americana ter escolhido esse prefixo mostra que a hashtag já assumiu mais uma função desde que estreou, sete anos atrás: é um comando. As quatro linhas perpendiculares viraram uma recomendação resumida: “compartilhe isto, agora”.
As hashtags transformam uma frase num slogan. Pense nelas como o punho erguido da pontuação.
No Brasil, um exemplo dessa nova tendência foi o protesto online intitulado #EuNãoMereçoSerEstuprada, organizado pela jornalista Nana Queiroz, no final de março. Veja ao final deste post galeria de fotos postadas por mulheres de todo o país em apoio à campanha.
Outro exemplo recente foi a campanha #SomosTodosMacacos, iniciada pelo jogador Neymar em apoio a seu colega Daniel Alves.
#somostodosmacacos #weareallmonkeys
— Neymar Júnior (@neymarjr) April 27, 2014
#somostodosmonos
#totssommonos http://t.co/dEESd2bcme
“A hashtag diz: ‘Isto é algo para o qual você precisa voltar sua atenção agora, neste momento’, e ‘isto é algo com que você pode se envolver e pelo qual pode mostrar seu apoio’”, comentou Ruth Page, professora da Universidade de Leicester que pesquisa mídias sociais e linguagem. “É como um chamado à ação.”
A ascensão da hashtag como comando coincide com o avanço da cerquilha (o símbolo #) para fora dos textos digitados, invadindo imagens, vídeos e até objetos, onde não cumpre finalidade técnica nenhuma. (Clique sobre a palavra digitada #cappuccino” em quase qualquer site de mídia social, e você verá todos os outros posts que incluem o termo. Clique numa imagem contendo “#cappuccino” e não acontece nada.)
Vale notar que “#BringBackOurGirls” não apenas foi digitado em mais de 2 milhões de tuítes como foi estampado sobre milhares de fotos compartilhadas no Instagram. Sophia Amoruso, fundadora do NastyGal, escolheu uma hashtag para ser o título de seu livro (em papel), “#GIRLBOSS”. E mais de metade dos anunciantes no Super Bowl, nos EUA, deste ano incluíram hashtags em seus comerciais –uma dica não muito sutil de que devemos não apenas ver os slogans deles, mas repeti-los.
Essas hashtags fotografadas e filmadas mostram que as pessoas hoje aderem ao # como não apenas como uma maneira de organizar informações, mas, muito mais, como instrução para divulgá-las.
A hashtag converteu-se numa indicação subconsciente de “repetir”, graças em parte à sua associação inicial com a política e os “trending topics” (os assuntos mais comentados).
LEIA TAMBÉM
Mais uma plaquinha se levanta
“Pode haver dois antecedentes históricos que convergem na sloganização das hashtags: por um lado, temos o uso das hashtags para falar de causas políticas no Twitter, e por outro, há a utilização de hashtags para levar temas a ser mais comentados”, disse Susan Herring, professora de ciência da informação e linguística na Universidade Indiana, aludindo à lista de “trending topics” do Twitter, que desde o início se baseou extensamente em termos assinalados com hashtags.
Embora o primeiro hashtag no Twitter tenha sido usado em conexão com um encontro de especialistas em tecnologia (#barcamp), Herring observou que as hashtags ganharam reconhecimento amplo durante as manifestações por mais democracia no Irã em 2009, quando termos como “#IranElection” e “Neda” proliferaram no Twitter.
E, desde o início, o “hash”, ou #, foi associado a um esforço para divulgar alguma coisa: “Supunha-se que as hashtags eram clicáveis, logo, difusíveis, e a razão pela qual vocês os usava, pelo menos parte do tempo, era que queria criar um ‘trending topic’”, ela pontuou.
O achatamento do texto que ocorre online também ajudou a dar lugar à função “sloganizadora” da hashtag. Numa era anterior, reconhecíamos um slogan pelo modo como era escrito sobre cartazes, buttons ou outdoors. Havia pontos de exclamação. Letras garrafais e coloridas. Imagens do Tio Sam apontando. Hoje, temos 140 caracteres que não mudam de aparência, não importa o que escrevemos. “Quando apenas digitamos no Twitter ou no Instagram, não temos tanta variação tipográfica disponível”, disse Herring.
Tuitar “We can do it” (nós podemos fazer!) não transmite a mesma força do pôster original de Rosie the Riveter, da Segunda Guerra Mundial. A frase pode ser entendia como referência a conseguir mais seguidores, como palavra de ordem dos torcedores de um time de futebol ou como campanha de levantamento de fundos –ou como todas essas alternativas, segundo alguns tuítes recentes. Mas com “#WeCanDoIt”, temos as sementes de um movimento.
Ou talvez você só tenha um slogan que chama a atenção. É possível que hashtags como "#BringBackOurGirls" ou "#IAmBradleyManning" (Eu sou Bradley Manning) resultem em mudanças concretas de políticas. Mas parece que, na maioria dos casos, as hashtags são mais eficazes para difundir hashtags, e não tanto para desencadear ações offline. Quem sabe você possa iniciar uma hashtag que resolva esse problema.
May 10, 2014
How #Hashtags Became The Raised Fist Of Punctuation
Hashtags began as a way to search for tweets about specific topics (#socialmedia), evolved into a tool for adding nuance (#ohyeah) and are now showing up in places where they appear to serve no practical function whatsoever: on T-shirts, book covers, purses and signs. We can’t click on physical objects. But we throw hashtags on there anyway.
Michelle Obama did as much this week when she tweeted a photograph of herself holding a piece of paper with the handwritten words "#Bring Back Our Girls.” The phrase, a reference to the over 200 young women kidnapped by an extremist group in Nigeria, could have said “Bring Back Our Girls,” plain and simple. Instead, it led with the hash symbol.
Obama’s choice of prefix demonstrates how the hashtag has taken on yet another function since its debut seven years ago: It is a command. The four perpendicular lines have become shorthand for "share this and share this now."
Hashtags turn a phrase into a slogan. Think of them as the raised fist of punctuation.
"The hashtag says, ‘This is something you need to have your attention drawn to right at this moment,’ and ‘This is something you can get involved with and be associated with and show your support for,’" said Ruth Page, a professor at the University of Leicester whose research focuses on social media and language. "It's like a call for action."
The rise of the hashtag-as-command coincides with the hash’s creep beyond typed text and into images and videos, or even onto objects, where they fulfill no technical purpose whatsoever (Click the typed word “#cappuccino” on almost any social media site, and you’ll be shown all other posts that include the term. Click an image containing “#cappuccino” and, well, nothing happens). Consider that “#BringBackOurGirls” has not only been typed in over 2 million tweets, but it’s also been stamped on thousands of photos shared to Instagram. Sophia Amoruso, the founder of NastyGal, featured a hashtag as the title to her (paper) book, “#GIRLBOSS.” And more than half of advertisers in this year’s Super Bowl included hashtags in their commercials -- a not-so-subtle hint we should repeat their slogans, not just see them.
These photographed and filmed hashtags show that people now embrace the hash as much more than a way to organize information and, rather, as an instruction to spread it.
The hashtag has evolved into a subconscious cue for “repeat,” thanks in part to its early associations with politics and trending topics.
“There may be two historical antecedents that converge in the sloganizing of hashtags: on the one hand, you have the use of hashtags to talk about political causes on Twitter and on the other, there’s the use of hashtags to cause topics to trend,” said Susan Herring, a professor of information science and linguistics at Indiana University, referencing Twitter’s list of “trending topics," which early on pulled extensively from hashtagged terms.
Though the earliest Twitter hashtag was used in connection with a tech meetup (#barcamp), Herring noted that hashtags gained mainstream recognition during the 2009 Iranian revolution, when terms like “#IranElection” and “#Neda” coursed through the service. And early on, the "hash" was associated with an effort to get the word out: "Hashtags are originally assumed to be clickable and spreadable, and the reason that you use them, at least some of the time, is because you want to create a trending topic,” Herring said.
The flattening of text that occurs online has also helped give rise to the “sloganizing” function of hashtags. In an earlier age, we’d have recognized a slogan from the way it was lettered on placards, pins or billboards. We had exclamation marks. Big, colorful block letters. Uncle Sam pointing. Now, we’ve got 140 characters that look the same no matter what we write. “We don’t have as much typographic variation available if we’re just typing on Twitter or Instagram,” Herring said.
Tweeting “We can do it” carries none of the oomph of the original World War II Rosie the Riveter poster. It could be a reference to getting more followers, a cheer for a football team or part of a fundraising push -- or all of the above, according to some recent tweets. But “#WeCanDoIt”? Now you’ve got the seeds of a movement.
Or perhaps you have only a catchy slogan. While it's possible hashtags like "#BringBackOurGirls" or "#IAmBradleyManning" yield policy change, it seems more often than not, hashtags are most effective at spreading hashtags -- and less able to spark offline action. See if you can start a hashtag that fixes that.
Michelle Obama did as much this week when she tweeted a photograph of herself holding a piece of paper with the handwritten words "#Bring Back Our Girls.” The phrase, a reference to the over 200 young women kidnapped by an extremist group in Nigeria, could have said “Bring Back Our Girls,” plain and simple. Instead, it led with the hash symbol.
Obama’s choice of prefix demonstrates how the hashtag has taken on yet another function since its debut seven years ago: It is a command. The four perpendicular lines have become shorthand for "share this and share this now."
Hashtags turn a phrase into a slogan. Think of them as the raised fist of punctuation.
"The hashtag says, ‘This is something you need to have your attention drawn to right at this moment,’ and ‘This is something you can get involved with and be associated with and show your support for,’" said Ruth Page, a professor at the University of Leicester whose research focuses on social media and language. "It's like a call for action."
Our prayers are with the missing Nigerian girls and their families. It's time to #BringBackOurGirls. -mo pic.twitter.com/glDKDotJRt
— The First Lady (@FLOTUS) May 7, 2014
The rise of the hashtag-as-command coincides with the hash’s creep beyond typed text and into images and videos, or even onto objects, where they fulfill no technical purpose whatsoever (Click the typed word “#cappuccino” on almost any social media site, and you’ll be shown all other posts that include the term. Click an image containing “#cappuccino” and, well, nothing happens). Consider that “#BringBackOurGirls” has not only been typed in over 2 million tweets, but it’s also been stamped on thousands of photos shared to Instagram. Sophia Amoruso, the founder of NastyGal, featured a hashtag as the title to her (paper) book, “#GIRLBOSS.” And more than half of advertisers in this year’s Super Bowl included hashtags in their commercials -- a not-so-subtle hint we should repeat their slogans, not just see them.
These photographed and filmed hashtags show that people now embrace the hash as much more than a way to organize information and, rather, as an instruction to spread it.
The hashtag has evolved into a subconscious cue for “repeat,” thanks in part to its early associations with politics and trending topics.
“There may be two historical antecedents that converge in the sloganizing of hashtags: on the one hand, you have the use of hashtags to talk about political causes on Twitter and on the other, there’s the use of hashtags to cause topics to trend,” said Susan Herring, a professor of information science and linguistics at Indiana University, referencing Twitter’s list of “trending topics," which early on pulled extensively from hashtagged terms.
Though the earliest Twitter hashtag was used in connection with a tech meetup (#barcamp), Herring noted that hashtags gained mainstream recognition during the 2009 Iranian revolution, when terms like “#IranElection” and “#Neda” coursed through the service. And early on, the "hash" was associated with an effort to get the word out: "Hashtags are originally assumed to be clickable and spreadable, and the reason that you use them, at least some of the time, is because you want to create a trending topic,” Herring said.
The flattening of text that occurs online has also helped give rise to the “sloganizing” function of hashtags. In an earlier age, we’d have recognized a slogan from the way it was lettered on placards, pins or billboards. We had exclamation marks. Big, colorful block letters. Uncle Sam pointing. Now, we’ve got 140 characters that look the same no matter what we write. “We don’t have as much typographic variation available if we’re just typing on Twitter or Instagram,” Herring said.
Tweeting “We can do it” carries none of the oomph of the original World War II Rosie the Riveter poster. It could be a reference to getting more followers, a cheer for a football team or part of a fundraising push -- or all of the above, according to some recent tweets. But “#WeCanDoIt”? Now you’ve got the seeds of a movement.
Or perhaps you have only a catchy slogan. While it's possible hashtags like "#BringBackOurGirls" or "#IAmBradleyManning" yield policy change, it seems more often than not, hashtags are most effective at spreading hashtags -- and less able to spark offline action. See if you can start a hashtag that fixes that.
April 30, 2014
What Mark Zuckerberg Means When He Says He Loves You
When a social network loves its users very, very much, it helps them get some of their privacy back.
Mark Zuckerberg tried to convey an image of a beneficent Facebook at the company's f8 conference Wednesday, introducing an update that would let members claw back the personal information they share with third-party applications. Zuckerberg said that he'd been doing a lot of thinking on the eve of his 30th birthday, and had decided Facebook must "build a culture of loving the people we serve." He added, "I hope you can see the seeds of this in what we're building today."
There's no doubt Facebook's new login policy does a service to its members, who will now be able select what data from their profiles is available to an app, or even log in "anonymously," not sharing information with the app at all.
But a compassionate act of love? A sign of Facebook's undying commitment to "put people first," as Zuckerberg said was his priority? Not quite.
Though framed as a privacy safeguard, the latest login options are just another way for Facebook to learn even more about its members' activities online. If logging in with a Facebook identity appears trustworthy, Facebook's users will be more inclined to tote Facebook with them to third-party services, which in turn will give Zuckerberg a more complete picture of what his users do around the Internet. The company wants people to take Facebook everywhere they go -- Gilt Group, Paperless Post, One King's Lane, Spotify -- so it can learn what its members love and improve its ad-targeting abilities.
Giving people more control over what personal information third-party services can access will "definitely benefit Facebook," said Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst with eMarketer. "Any time you use Facebook to log into an app, Facebook can capture that information and use it for its own ad targeting."
As Zuckerberg noted Wednesday, many people currently hesitate to "Log In with Facebook" when signing into a service. They worry that letting an app access their Facebook account could mean mortifying purchases will appear in friends' News Feeds (they might!), or spam messages will inundate their colleagues (also possible!). So instead, people opt for the hassle of creating a new username, or else rely on another one of their accounts, such as Gmail or Twitter.
When this happens, Facebook loses out on the chance to add to its understanding of who we are and what we do. Bypassing the Facebook login means that Facebook might never discover your love for online dating apps or photo-editing tools -- information that's crucial for sweetening Facebook's pitch to advertisers, and particularly key as the company makes a push for developers' ad dollars.
"If people log into apps through Facebook's login, then Facebook knows more about the user. It knows more about the apps they use, how many apps they're using and how often," said Nate Elliott, an analyst with the research firm Forrester. "That gives Facebook the theoretical ability to better target apps to users and [the] theoretical ability to understand the apps that they're using."
Developers lose the most in Facebook's ostensibly compassionate shift toward more private logins: App creators will no longer get to help themselves to their users' personal information, and will, in some cases, have to deal with unidentified individuals who try Facebook's new "log in anonymously" option. Elliott said that when Zuckerberg announced the new policy, the audience at the f8 auditorium, which consisted mostly of developers, was silent.
Zuckerberg's alleged soul-searching should perhaps prompt users of his site to do the same. Can they trust a "loving" Facebook? And will it really be so different from the kind of Facebook they knew before?
"Privacy is like a yo-yo for Faceook," said Elliott. "Sometimes it's near, and sometimes it's far."
Mark Zuckerberg tried to convey an image of a beneficent Facebook at the company's f8 conference Wednesday, introducing an update that would let members claw back the personal information they share with third-party applications. Zuckerberg said that he'd been doing a lot of thinking on the eve of his 30th birthday, and had decided Facebook must "build a culture of loving the people we serve." He added, "I hope you can see the seeds of this in what we're building today."
There's no doubt Facebook's new login policy does a service to its members, who will now be able select what data from their profiles is available to an app, or even log in "anonymously," not sharing information with the app at all.
But a compassionate act of love? A sign of Facebook's undying commitment to "put people first," as Zuckerberg said was his priority? Not quite.
Though framed as a privacy safeguard, the latest login options are just another way for Facebook to learn even more about its members' activities online. If logging in with a Facebook identity appears trustworthy, Facebook's users will be more inclined to tote Facebook with them to third-party services, which in turn will give Zuckerberg a more complete picture of what his users do around the Internet. The company wants people to take Facebook everywhere they go -- Gilt Group, Paperless Post, One King's Lane, Spotify -- so it can learn what its members love and improve its ad-targeting abilities.
Giving people more control over what personal information third-party services can access will "definitely benefit Facebook," said Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst with eMarketer. "Any time you use Facebook to log into an app, Facebook can capture that information and use it for its own ad targeting."
As Zuckerberg noted Wednesday, many people currently hesitate to "Log In with Facebook" when signing into a service. They worry that letting an app access their Facebook account could mean mortifying purchases will appear in friends' News Feeds (they might!), or spam messages will inundate their colleagues (also possible!). So instead, people opt for the hassle of creating a new username, or else rely on another one of their accounts, such as Gmail or Twitter.
When this happens, Facebook loses out on the chance to add to its understanding of who we are and what we do. Bypassing the Facebook login means that Facebook might never discover your love for online dating apps or photo-editing tools -- information that's crucial for sweetening Facebook's pitch to advertisers, and particularly key as the company makes a push for developers' ad dollars.
"If people log into apps through Facebook's login, then Facebook knows more about the user. It knows more about the apps they use, how many apps they're using and how often," said Nate Elliott, an analyst with the research firm Forrester. "That gives Facebook the theoretical ability to better target apps to users and [the] theoretical ability to understand the apps that they're using."
Developers lose the most in Facebook's ostensibly compassionate shift toward more private logins: App creators will no longer get to help themselves to their users' personal information, and will, in some cases, have to deal with unidentified individuals who try Facebook's new "log in anonymously" option. Elliott said that when Zuckerberg announced the new policy, the audience at the f8 auditorium, which consisted mostly of developers, was silent.
Zuckerberg's alleged soul-searching should perhaps prompt users of his site to do the same. Can they trust a "loving" Facebook? And will it really be so different from the kind of Facebook they knew before?
"Privacy is like a yo-yo for Faceook," said Elliott. "Sometimes it's near, and sometimes it's far."
April 29, 2014
Twitter Tries Out A New Definition For Twitter
When Twitter filed for its initial public stock offering last year, it clumsily described itself as a "global platform for public self-expression and conversation in real time." This tagline was used by approximately no one.
As Twitter faces investor pressure to show its can attract more mainstream members, the social network has come up with a new definition of what Twitter does.
"We think of Twitter as a companion experience to what's happening in your world," Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo said on the company's earnings call Tuesday. Costolo repeated the line several times during the question and answer session with investors and analysts, while also asserting that Twitter, which has about a fifth as many active users as Facebook, is "incredibly mainstream."
Twitter no doubt hopes the new "companion experience" nomenclature will prove a friendlier, more memorable mantra that convinces holdouts to get Twitter handles of their own. The catchphrase is a kind of catchall that attempts to cover the many possible uses for Twitter, ranging from sourcing stories and getting news to catching celebrity gossip and talking about TV shows.
The company does need to convince people that it has something to offer. (User growth, already sluggish, has slowed .) In a sense, the fact that Twitter is already very familiar to mainstream audiences points to a deeper problem confronting Costolo and co: The challenge for Twitter isn't that it's unknown. The challenge is that people -- many, many people -- know Twitter and know they don't want to join.
Reflecting concerns over Twitter's success attracting users, the company's stock price plummeted in after-hours trading Tuesday, even as Twitter reported strong gains in advertising revenue.
Twitter's new slogan may try to address the people problem by shifting Twitter's emphasis from speaking to listening. The tagline suggests that Twitter doesn't have to be a place where you self-express and share information. It can just be that screen you flick through while watching the Grammys. The line tries to reassure you it's totally okay to be a passive consumer, rather than conversing creator.
This is a point Twitter has been trying to make for several years. The biggest misconception about Twitter, Costolo said in a 2012 interview, is that "you have to tweet to Twitter." For the past four years, Costolo and his predecessor have presided over a series of redesigns that have shrunken, squished and de-prioritized the tweet box, as if to tell silent Twitterers it's fine to stay mute. The tweet box once sat on top of people's timelines, making it the first thing they saw when they logged on. Now, it's been reduced to a fraction of the size and slid to the left side of the screen. As it stands, 44 percent of existing Twitter accounts have never sent a tweet, according to a report released earlier this month by the analytics firm Twopcharts.
Convincing Twitter holdouts to reconsider the site is likely to require more drastic changes to Twitter's offerings, which risk alienating the old-timers. Costolo has already introduced a more visual, image-heavy look, one that he said helped increase Twitter's base of users in the most recent quarter. He also noted that Twitter had simplified its signup process on mobile phones, and was better at suggesting Twitter accounts for new members to follow.
Coming next: A move toward private conversations. Costolo told investors Twitter has plans to "[make] it possible for people to more fluidly move between the public conversation and private conversation." There's a chance the embrace of private messaging will woo the never-adopters. But it's a certitude that this will be a change in focus for the social media site. The first word in the first image Twitter included in its initial stock offering filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission? "Public."
As Twitter faces investor pressure to show its can attract more mainstream members, the social network has come up with a new definition of what Twitter does.
"We think of Twitter as a companion experience to what's happening in your world," Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo said on the company's earnings call Tuesday. Costolo repeated the line several times during the question and answer session with investors and analysts, while also asserting that Twitter, which has about a fifth as many active users as Facebook, is "incredibly mainstream."
Twitter no doubt hopes the new "companion experience" nomenclature will prove a friendlier, more memorable mantra that convinces holdouts to get Twitter handles of their own. The catchphrase is a kind of catchall that attempts to cover the many possible uses for Twitter, ranging from sourcing stories and getting news to catching celebrity gossip and talking about TV shows.
The company does need to convince people that it has something to offer. (User growth, already sluggish, has slowed .) In a sense, the fact that Twitter is already very familiar to mainstream audiences points to a deeper problem confronting Costolo and co: The challenge for Twitter isn't that it's unknown. The challenge is that people -- many, many people -- know Twitter and know they don't want to join.
Reflecting concerns over Twitter's success attracting users, the company's stock price plummeted in after-hours trading Tuesday, even as Twitter reported strong gains in advertising revenue.
Twitter's new slogan may try to address the people problem by shifting Twitter's emphasis from speaking to listening. The tagline suggests that Twitter doesn't have to be a place where you self-express and share information. It can just be that screen you flick through while watching the Grammys. The line tries to reassure you it's totally okay to be a passive consumer, rather than conversing creator.
This is a point Twitter has been trying to make for several years. The biggest misconception about Twitter, Costolo said in a 2012 interview, is that "you have to tweet to Twitter." For the past four years, Costolo and his predecessor have presided over a series of redesigns that have shrunken, squished and de-prioritized the tweet box, as if to tell silent Twitterers it's fine to stay mute. The tweet box once sat on top of people's timelines, making it the first thing they saw when they logged on. Now, it's been reduced to a fraction of the size and slid to the left side of the screen. As it stands, 44 percent of existing Twitter accounts have never sent a tweet, according to a report released earlier this month by the analytics firm Twopcharts.
Convincing Twitter holdouts to reconsider the site is likely to require more drastic changes to Twitter's offerings, which risk alienating the old-timers. Costolo has already introduced a more visual, image-heavy look, one that he said helped increase Twitter's base of users in the most recent quarter. He also noted that Twitter had simplified its signup process on mobile phones, and was better at suggesting Twitter accounts for new members to follow.
Coming next: A move toward private conversations. Costolo told investors Twitter has plans to "[make] it possible for people to more fluidly move between the public conversation and private conversation." There's a chance the embrace of private messaging will woo the never-adopters. But it's a certitude that this will be a change in focus for the social media site. The first word in the first image Twitter included in its initial stock offering filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission? "Public."
April 25, 2014
At Last, A Formula For What Photos The Internet Likes
Among the existential crises that plague me on sleepless nights: Why did my hilarious photo of a pig-roast-cum-dance-party get only nine "likes" on Instagram, when my airplane portrait got 40? And, crucially, will I ever learn how to be popular?
In what feels like an increasingly common scenario these days, it appears my best shot at being liked requires taking orders from an algorithm. According to new research based on machine learning software, if we want our photos to be popular, we'd better show skin, guns and/or teacups.
Aditya Khosla, a graduate student in computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has devised a formula that sheds light on how the contents of a photograph may predict its popularity online. In a research paper published this month, Khosla and his co-authors explain how they analyzed 2.3 million Flickr photos to see which got the most views, then looked for correlations between the color, composition and subject of an image and that picture's likelihood of languishing in a state of online obscurity.
"Some people have 10 friends, some have a thousand. Despite all these differences, it's interesting to see that the content [of the image] itself can be used to predict how popular an image is going to be," said Khosla.
Of the 1,000 objects identified in the photos, the researchers found that "brassieres," "revolvers," "miniskirts," "maillots" (a one-piece woman's bathing suit), "bikinis" and "cups" have a "strong positive impact" on a photo's popularity. (Our demitasse fascination could potentially be an error resulting from the software's image recognition capabilities, but given that the finding held consistent for so many images, Khosla doubts it's a fluke. Rather, it seems the researchers unwittingly surfaced our subconscious attraction to pottery.)
While underwear and dinnerware get people clicking, other objects -- including spatulas, plungers, laptops, golf carts and space heaters -- tend to kill interest in an image, the researchers found. Giant pandas, cheetahs, llamas, basketballs, ladybugs and plows all produce a slight bump in viewers' attention.
When photographing your masterpiece, the researchers also suggest staying away from greenish and blue-gray hues, as these "outdoorsy" colors "tend to be less popular," said Khosla. Instead, the algorithm recommends a palette of bright, Mastisse-ish shades, including aqua, bright red, navy and chartreuse.
"The longer bar means that the color leads to more popularity," explains Khosla.
And lastly, opt for human figures, or at the very least a well defined focal point.
"We can see that semantically meaningful objects such as people tend to contribute positively to the popularity of an image," the researchers wrote in their report. "Further we note that open scenes with little activity tend to be unpopular (with many exceptions of course)."
Naturally, social cues, such as the number of online followers a person has, can also affect the popularity of an image. But it's probably easier to tweak our photos to engineer their success than it is to actually make ourselves more likable. Khosla, who has developed a program that alters headshots to make people's faces more memorable, speculates that his new findings could help create software that would let users edit their photos to make them more appealing.
"Can photographers be aided with suggestions on how to modify their pictures for broad appeal vs artistic appeal?" the researchers ask in their report. "This could be an interesting research direction as well as a promising product."
An Instagram photo of a teacup -- in the pink shade Khosla's algorithm recommends, no less.
In the meantime, Khosla and his co-authors have launched an online tool that lets photographers test the odds that their image will be popular. Scores can be as low as 0.8 or as high as around seven, and a score of, say, four indicates that a photographer can expect roughly 16 (or two-to-the-fourth-power) views per day on that image. Since the rating isn't exact, Khosla advises people to look at the relative scores of several images before they choose which one to post.
In some initial tests, I found the software's tastes matched up nicely with the whims of my friends on Instagram. Khosla's algorithm gave my pork portrait a big thumbs down.
In what feels like an increasingly common scenario these days, it appears my best shot at being liked requires taking orders from an algorithm. According to new research based on machine learning software, if we want our photos to be popular, we'd better show skin, guns and/or teacups.
Aditya Khosla, a graduate student in computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has devised a formula that sheds light on how the contents of a photograph may predict its popularity online. In a research paper published this month, Khosla and his co-authors explain how they analyzed 2.3 million Flickr photos to see which got the most views, then looked for correlations between the color, composition and subject of an image and that picture's likelihood of languishing in a state of online obscurity.
"Some people have 10 friends, some have a thousand. Despite all these differences, it's interesting to see that the content [of the image] itself can be used to predict how popular an image is going to be," said Khosla.
Of the 1,000 objects identified in the photos, the researchers found that "brassieres," "revolvers," "miniskirts," "maillots" (a one-piece woman's bathing suit), "bikinis" and "cups" have a "strong positive impact" on a photo's popularity. (Our demitasse fascination could potentially be an error resulting from the software's image recognition capabilities, but given that the finding held consistent for so many images, Khosla doubts it's a fluke. Rather, it seems the researchers unwittingly surfaced our subconscious attraction to pottery.)
While underwear and dinnerware get people clicking, other objects -- including spatulas, plungers, laptops, golf carts and space heaters -- tend to kill interest in an image, the researchers found. Giant pandas, cheetahs, llamas, basketballs, ladybugs and plows all produce a slight bump in viewers' attention.
When photographing your masterpiece, the researchers also suggest staying away from greenish and blue-gray hues, as these "outdoorsy" colors "tend to be less popular," said Khosla. Instead, the algorithm recommends a palette of bright, Mastisse-ish shades, including aqua, bright red, navy and chartreuse.
"The longer bar means that the color leads to more popularity," explains Khosla.
And lastly, opt for human figures, or at the very least a well defined focal point.
"We can see that semantically meaningful objects such as people tend to contribute positively to the popularity of an image," the researchers wrote in their report. "Further we note that open scenes with little activity tend to be unpopular (with many exceptions of course)."
Naturally, social cues, such as the number of online followers a person has, can also affect the popularity of an image. But it's probably easier to tweak our photos to engineer their success than it is to actually make ourselves more likable. Khosla, who has developed a program that alters headshots to make people's faces more memorable, speculates that his new findings could help create software that would let users edit their photos to make them more appealing.
"Can photographers be aided with suggestions on how to modify their pictures for broad appeal vs artistic appeal?" the researchers ask in their report. "This could be an interesting research direction as well as a promising product."
An Instagram photo of a teacup -- in the pink shade Khosla's algorithm recommends, no less.
In the meantime, Khosla and his co-authors have launched an online tool that lets photographers test the odds that their image will be popular. Scores can be as low as 0.8 or as high as around seven, and a score of, say, four indicates that a photographer can expect roughly 16 (or two-to-the-fourth-power) views per day on that image. Since the rating isn't exact, Khosla advises people to look at the relative scores of several images before they choose which one to post.
In some initial tests, I found the software's tastes matched up nicely with the whims of my friends on Instagram. Khosla's algorithm gave my pork portrait a big thumbs down.
April 21, 2014
Facebooking After Dictators: What Happens When A Country Escapes Near Internet Darkness
YANGON, Myanmar -- Eh Thaw Taw -- “Royal” to his Facebook friends -- relies on his Huawei smartphone for the usual message-sending, picture-taking and status-updating, but he never, ever uses Google for the simple reason that he doesn’t know how.
“I can’t search,” the 24-year-old says, thumbing his phone as we stand under trees on the Yangon University campus, which reopened last fall after being shut down in 1988 by a military regime wary of protests. What if Royal, an economics major, needs to look up, say, the gross domestic product of the United States? “I ask my teacher, who will search for it,” he answers.
Royal’s classmate, 20-year-old E Lawm Nap, is appalled. “In this century, every person can use website or the Google!” she chides him.
But then again, this is Myanmar, a country that only three years ago had a lower cellphone penetration rate than North Korea, and even now enforces a policy of one SIM card per family. It’s a country where computer schools still lack computers; text messages can take two hours (or two days) to arrive; and Royal is forced to be nocturnal, since the only reliable Internet connection he can get is from midnight to dawn.
At the same time, it’s a place where smartphones have spread so quickly and so suddenly that even 20-somethings have had whiplash. Since 2011, when Myanmar's military dictatorship announced a shift toward “disciplined democracy,” Yangon has, in tech terms, leapt from 1999 to 2014 -- from flip phones to Facebook -- in the span of about 36 months. (Other cities still lag far behind Yangon, however.) The nation's cellphone penetration jumped from 2 percent in 2011 to 10 percent the following year.
I sneaked into a back entrance of Yangon University, which prohibits foreign visitors, for a glimpse at how students in Myanmar have adjusted to this new life with Samsung. In some respects, they’re like college kids anywhere. The girls in Royal’s English class love Candy Crush, WhatsApp, Skype, YouTube and Viber, an app for placing calls overseas. They all use Zapya, an app that lets friends exchange files phone-to-phone via WiFi, so they can avoid paying for apps, songs or Internet access. A few rehash familiar complaints about Facebook.
“In Burma, almost all students use Facebook to check each other. I don’t like that,” E Lawm Nap says.
But with the Internet still in its infancy, Royal and his friends have had to piece together what they know about the Web mostly by word of mouth. They certainly can’t turn to their parents -- “people from the past,” scoffs Royal. Sharing tips friend to friend has at once proved highly efficient and less than reliable, and there have been misunderstandings that come with a piecemeal grasp of the Internet. As a HuffPost blogger recounted, you can ask a room of people if they use email, and no one will raise a hand. Ask who's got Gmail, and all arms will go up.
Perhaps chief among the confusions is the tendency to mistake Facebook for the entire Web.
“The users are quite funny here,” says Thar Htet, 29, the founder of a Yangon-based startup that creates mobile apps. “They’re thinking that using Facebook is using the Internet.”
“They use lots of games and apps,” he adds, “but they’ve never really experienced the Web.”
Yangon can feel like a city of Facebook addicts. Though smartphones still cost a bundle relative to the average income, they’re everywhere on the streets. Couples lounging on park benches stare at Facebook instead of speaking to each other. Men scroll through their News Feeds while eating dinner on the sidewalk. I saw an elderly woman engrossed in the Fruit Ninja game, the volume cranked up on her phone.
People sit with smartphones at Yangon's Shwedagon Pagoda, a sacred Buddhist site.
Royal says his teachers have to turn off the WiFi in his school’s building to prevent “naughty” classmates from Facebooking during class.
“Facebook is a really time consuming thing,” agrees Thar Htet, who’s likewise set up the Internet router in his office to block Facebook.com from 9 a.m. to noon and 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. daily. “Productivity really suffers because of this distraction.”
Since launching in Myanmar in fall 2011, Facebook has assumed the role of Amazon.com, Gmail, Dropbox and a government propaganda apparatus, all in one.
Merchants in Myanmar set up virtual storefronts on the social network, where they hawk iPhone cases or smuggled designer denim. Royal uses Facebook in place of Gmail, which, like Google, he says he hasn’t been able to master. Naw Say, a 26 year-old former journalist, doesn’t share much on social media, but uploads all her photos to Facebook so she’ll have a back up if her computer crashes.
“If you want to vote for the people who most use Facebook,” said Yangon Media Group chairman U Ko Ko at a conference in Myanmar last month, “I think we will win the first prize.”
Which might actually be a problem. Journalists from Myanmar, who spoke at an event in Yangon on press freedom in March, express concern that their country’s eager social media adherents might, in the wake of political reforms, be taking their new freedom of speech too far. People have learned how to share on Facebook, but not what to share on Facebook, the reporters explain. As the nation's Facebook members embrace their new right to say anything -- while not knowing the consequences of yelling “fire” in a crowded social network -- Facebook has turned into a conduit for violent rumors, bigoted threats and deliberate misinformation that has inflamed tensions between Myanmar's ethnic minorities.
"People have been under a dictatorship for a long time. Now, after the government allowed them to write whatever they like, you see a lot of people just write whatever they like and it becomes hate speech,” says Naw Say. “They think the government allows that, so they can write whatever they want.”
In fact, the government may even be encouraging hate speech, depending on whom you ask. There's speculation that official agencies are seeding the violent propaganda, or, at the very least, condoning the misinformation. If fighting breaks out between ethnic groups, the government will have an excuse to intervene, assert its power, and, it may hope, look like a hero even as it claws back control.
The government "want[s] the people to get angry and to fight each other, so they will come and solve, so they will have a good name,” says Naw Say.
The spread of technology has given rise to many more conspiracy theories focused on interference by officials. Yangoners whisper that bureaucrats are deliberately squelching cellphone speeds in an effort to stymy the spread of information in the city. In Myanmar's capital, Naypyidaw, the military-turned-civilian administration enjoys superfast 3G service, I’m told. In Yangon, the nation's business center and largest city, downloading a photo can take an afternoon.
I ask Royal if he’s satisfied with the pace of Myanmar's reforms.
“Still not fast enough,” he says. But he adds, “I don’t know, I’m not a politician.”
“We’re not interested in political,” his friend explains.
Before I leave the group so they can rehearse a PowerPoint presentation they’ll give in class the coming week, I ask what they plan to do when they graduate. E Lawm Nap is studying theology. Another girl hopes to design websites. Royal’s plans are simple.
“I will search money,” he says with a grin.
Men in downtown Yangon consult their phones.
“I can’t search,” the 24-year-old says, thumbing his phone as we stand under trees on the Yangon University campus, which reopened last fall after being shut down in 1988 by a military regime wary of protests. What if Royal, an economics major, needs to look up, say, the gross domestic product of the United States? “I ask my teacher, who will search for it,” he answers.
Royal’s classmate, 20-year-old E Lawm Nap, is appalled. “In this century, every person can use website or the Google!” she chides him.
But then again, this is Myanmar, a country that only three years ago had a lower cellphone penetration rate than North Korea, and even now enforces a policy of one SIM card per family. It’s a country where computer schools still lack computers; text messages can take two hours (or two days) to arrive; and Royal is forced to be nocturnal, since the only reliable Internet connection he can get is from midnight to dawn.
At the same time, it’s a place where smartphones have spread so quickly and so suddenly that even 20-somethings have had whiplash. Since 2011, when Myanmar's military dictatorship announced a shift toward “disciplined democracy,” Yangon has, in tech terms, leapt from 1999 to 2014 -- from flip phones to Facebook -- in the span of about 36 months. (Other cities still lag far behind Yangon, however.) The nation's cellphone penetration jumped from 2 percent in 2011 to 10 percent the following year.
I sneaked into a back entrance of Yangon University, which prohibits foreign visitors, for a glimpse at how students in Myanmar have adjusted to this new life with Samsung. In some respects, they’re like college kids anywhere. The girls in Royal’s English class love Candy Crush, WhatsApp, Skype, YouTube and Viber, an app for placing calls overseas. They all use Zapya, an app that lets friends exchange files phone-to-phone via WiFi, so they can avoid paying for apps, songs or Internet access. A few rehash familiar complaints about Facebook.
“In Burma, almost all students use Facebook to check each other. I don’t like that,” E Lawm Nap says.
But with the Internet still in its infancy, Royal and his friends have had to piece together what they know about the Web mostly by word of mouth. They certainly can’t turn to their parents -- “people from the past,” scoffs Royal. Sharing tips friend to friend has at once proved highly efficient and less than reliable, and there have been misunderstandings that come with a piecemeal grasp of the Internet. As a HuffPost blogger recounted, you can ask a room of people if they use email, and no one will raise a hand. Ask who's got Gmail, and all arms will go up.
Perhaps chief among the confusions is the tendency to mistake Facebook for the entire Web.
“The users are quite funny here,” says Thar Htet, 29, the founder of a Yangon-based startup that creates mobile apps. “They’re thinking that using Facebook is using the Internet.”
“They use lots of games and apps,” he adds, “but they’ve never really experienced the Web.”
Yangon can feel like a city of Facebook addicts. Though smartphones still cost a bundle relative to the average income, they’re everywhere on the streets. Couples lounging on park benches stare at Facebook instead of speaking to each other. Men scroll through their News Feeds while eating dinner on the sidewalk. I saw an elderly woman engrossed in the Fruit Ninja game, the volume cranked up on her phone.
People sit with smartphones at Yangon's Shwedagon Pagoda, a sacred Buddhist site. Royal says his teachers have to turn off the WiFi in his school’s building to prevent “naughty” classmates from Facebooking during class.
“Facebook is a really time consuming thing,” agrees Thar Htet, who’s likewise set up the Internet router in his office to block Facebook.com from 9 a.m. to noon and 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. daily. “Productivity really suffers because of this distraction.”
Since launching in Myanmar in fall 2011, Facebook has assumed the role of Amazon.com, Gmail, Dropbox and a government propaganda apparatus, all in one.
Merchants in Myanmar set up virtual storefronts on the social network, where they hawk iPhone cases or smuggled designer denim. Royal uses Facebook in place of Gmail, which, like Google, he says he hasn’t been able to master. Naw Say, a 26 year-old former journalist, doesn’t share much on social media, but uploads all her photos to Facebook so she’ll have a back up if her computer crashes.
“If you want to vote for the people who most use Facebook,” said Yangon Media Group chairman U Ko Ko at a conference in Myanmar last month, “I think we will win the first prize.”
Which might actually be a problem. Journalists from Myanmar, who spoke at an event in Yangon on press freedom in March, express concern that their country’s eager social media adherents might, in the wake of political reforms, be taking their new freedom of speech too far. People have learned how to share on Facebook, but not what to share on Facebook, the reporters explain. As the nation's Facebook members embrace their new right to say anything -- while not knowing the consequences of yelling “fire” in a crowded social network -- Facebook has turned into a conduit for violent rumors, bigoted threats and deliberate misinformation that has inflamed tensions between Myanmar's ethnic minorities.
"People have been under a dictatorship for a long time. Now, after the government allowed them to write whatever they like, you see a lot of people just write whatever they like and it becomes hate speech,” says Naw Say. “They think the government allows that, so they can write whatever they want.”
In fact, the government may even be encouraging hate speech, depending on whom you ask. There's speculation that official agencies are seeding the violent propaganda, or, at the very least, condoning the misinformation. If fighting breaks out between ethnic groups, the government will have an excuse to intervene, assert its power, and, it may hope, look like a hero even as it claws back control.
The government "want[s] the people to get angry and to fight each other, so they will come and solve, so they will have a good name,” says Naw Say.
The spread of technology has given rise to many more conspiracy theories focused on interference by officials. Yangoners whisper that bureaucrats are deliberately squelching cellphone speeds in an effort to stymy the spread of information in the city. In Myanmar's capital, Naypyidaw, the military-turned-civilian administration enjoys superfast 3G service, I’m told. In Yangon, the nation's business center and largest city, downloading a photo can take an afternoon.
I ask Royal if he’s satisfied with the pace of Myanmar's reforms.
“Still not fast enough,” he says. But he adds, “I don’t know, I’m not a politician.”
“We’re not interested in political,” his friend explains.
Before I leave the group so they can rehearse a PowerPoint presentation they’ll give in class the coming week, I ask what they plan to do when they graduate. E Lawm Nap is studying theology. Another girl hopes to design websites. Royal’s plans are simple.
“I will search money,” he says with a grin.
Men in downtown Yangon consult their phones.
April 19, 2014
We're Ready For Our Robot Poet Overlords
A survey released this week revealed the American public to be skeptical that teleportation, lunar colonies or automated weather control will be achieved in the next 50 years. Yet another sci-fi scenario seemed more probable: Half of us are prepared for the dawn of artworks by computer Picassos, Brontes and perhaps even Baryshnikovs that can pass for human creations.
This level of optimism, at a time when robot artistry is still in its infancy, says more about our increasingly cozy relationship with technology than it does about the state of the gadgetry itself. It reflects confidence that our brainpower -- and even our creative genius -- will soon be outranked by that of brilliant machines.
According to the Pew Research Center study, which polled 1,001 American adults on predictions for the future, 51 percent of respondents expect that within 50 years, computers will be capable of creating art that is indistinguishable from works by homo sapiens. (By comparison, 39 percent expect to see teleportation, 33 percent think we’ll have colonized other planets and 19 percent predict we’ll be able to press a button and, in the literal sense, make it rain.)
The survey comes as we're hearing more about analytically minded, artificially intelligent algorithms that can assume the duties of human chauffeurs, lawyers, accountants and even journalists (NEVER!).
Pew's finding suggests that we fully expect robots and software to replace us at our desks, but, believing them capable of even greater cognitive feats, see this as merely the start of a broader mechanization. Though computer scientists emphasize that machines are still confined to repetitive, rule-based tasks, we apparently think it's only a matter of time before Siris of the world evolve from booking tickets to mimicking Beckett. We're already entertaining the idea of software that can move our spirits, reflect the human condition and be a sensitive genius, rather than an efficient robotic slave.
“That [Pew] statistic is more of a sociological comment than it is a technological comment because it represents changing human perceptions about technology, rather than any significant changes in computer generative art,” said Oscar Schwartz, a doctorate student researching a dissertation on robot poetry and the creator of a Turing test for poetry called Bot or Not. This mindset, he says, is "preparing us for a kind of interaction with technology [where] computers are no longer a blank notebook, but something we interact with dynamically."
At the same time, Schwartz argued that the data point underscores growing intimacy with devices. Believing smartphones to be sympathetic companions may be a prerequisite to feeling moved by their artistic works.
"We’re emotionally and philosophically ready to deal with the idea of computers generating art," said Schwartz. "That's for a number of reasons, probably first and foremost of which is our constant proximity to technology and how integrated it is to our daily lives."
"When that starts to happen," Schwartz added, "people would probably start creating emotional bonds with various pieces of technology and feeling human-like things toward their devices."
So how close are we to this goal of human-like computer art?
On Schwartz's Bot or Not website, which challenges visitors to guess whether a poem's author is mortal or digital, readers are already being fooled by bot poets. Computer scientist Alan Turing posited that a computer could be said to be intelligent if, in text-based chats with humans, it could convince 30 percent of its interlocutors that they were conversing with another person. The computer-generated poems on Bot or Not have been so successful in hitting that mark, that Schwartz has raised the bar.
"Most of the computer poems on the database of 300 poems easily pass the Turing test," said Schwartz, a "passing" score meaning at least 30 percent of people mistakenly attribute human authorship to a bot writer. He's made it more challenging: A poem "passes" if 60 percent of readers think a computer poem was written by a human. About five or six have already passed.
"[T]hat's a massive statistic," insisted Schwartz. "Sixty percent means it’s no longer chance -- that most people would think the poem was written by a human."
Pew may have asked the wrong question, however. Robot poetry, paintings or plays may not need to be indistinguishable from a person's to be successful. Witness the Web's love for @Horse_ebooks, a Twitter account that attracted thousands of followers with sometimes funny, sometimes poetic meditations churned out by a clever spam bot. Or so its fans assumed until last year. The humans were crushed to learn their bot bard was, in fact, just two guys at a keyboard.
This level of optimism, at a time when robot artistry is still in its infancy, says more about our increasingly cozy relationship with technology than it does about the state of the gadgetry itself. It reflects confidence that our brainpower -- and even our creative genius -- will soon be outranked by that of brilliant machines.
According to the Pew Research Center study, which polled 1,001 American adults on predictions for the future, 51 percent of respondents expect that within 50 years, computers will be capable of creating art that is indistinguishable from works by homo sapiens. (By comparison, 39 percent expect to see teleportation, 33 percent think we’ll have colonized other planets and 19 percent predict we’ll be able to press a button and, in the literal sense, make it rain.)
The survey comes as we're hearing more about analytically minded, artificially intelligent algorithms that can assume the duties of human chauffeurs, lawyers, accountants and even journalists (NEVER!).
Pew's finding suggests that we fully expect robots and software to replace us at our desks, but, believing them capable of even greater cognitive feats, see this as merely the start of a broader mechanization. Though computer scientists emphasize that machines are still confined to repetitive, rule-based tasks, we apparently think it's only a matter of time before Siris of the world evolve from booking tickets to mimicking Beckett. We're already entertaining the idea of software that can move our spirits, reflect the human condition and be a sensitive genius, rather than an efficient robotic slave.
“That [Pew] statistic is more of a sociological comment than it is a technological comment because it represents changing human perceptions about technology, rather than any significant changes in computer generative art,” said Oscar Schwartz, a doctorate student researching a dissertation on robot poetry and the creator of a Turing test for poetry called Bot or Not. This mindset, he says, is "preparing us for a kind of interaction with technology [where] computers are no longer a blank notebook, but something we interact with dynamically."
At the same time, Schwartz argued that the data point underscores growing intimacy with devices. Believing smartphones to be sympathetic companions may be a prerequisite to feeling moved by their artistic works.
"We’re emotionally and philosophically ready to deal with the idea of computers generating art," said Schwartz. "That's for a number of reasons, probably first and foremost of which is our constant proximity to technology and how integrated it is to our daily lives."
"When that starts to happen," Schwartz added, "people would probably start creating emotional bonds with various pieces of technology and feeling human-like things toward their devices."
So how close are we to this goal of human-like computer art?
On Schwartz's Bot or Not website, which challenges visitors to guess whether a poem's author is mortal or digital, readers are already being fooled by bot poets. Computer scientist Alan Turing posited that a computer could be said to be intelligent if, in text-based chats with humans, it could convince 30 percent of its interlocutors that they were conversing with another person. The computer-generated poems on Bot or Not have been so successful in hitting that mark, that Schwartz has raised the bar.
"Most of the computer poems on the database of 300 poems easily pass the Turing test," said Schwartz, a "passing" score meaning at least 30 percent of people mistakenly attribute human authorship to a bot writer. He's made it more challenging: A poem "passes" if 60 percent of readers think a computer poem was written by a human. About five or six have already passed.
"[T]hat's a massive statistic," insisted Schwartz. "Sixty percent means it’s no longer chance -- that most people would think the poem was written by a human."
Pew may have asked the wrong question, however. Robot poetry, paintings or plays may not need to be indistinguishable from a person's to be successful. Witness the Web's love for @Horse_ebooks, a Twitter account that attracted thousands of followers with sometimes funny, sometimes poetic meditations churned out by a clever spam bot. Or so its fans assumed until last year. The humans were crushed to learn their bot bard was, in fact, just two guys at a keyboard.
