Facebook Will Start Putting Ads in Oculus Quest Apps (theverge.com) 77
Amazon is Blocking Google's FLoC (digiday.com) 50
Why the Music Industry Doesn't Hate YouTube Any More (nytimes.com) 44
But is that changing? The New York Times reports those figures are from a time when YouTube was only selling ads on (or beside) music videos and then sharing that cash with the record labels and performs: Fast forward to last week, when YouTube disclosed that it paid music companies, musicians and songwriters more than $4 billion in the prior year. That came from advertising money and something that the industry has wanted forever and is now getting — a cut of YouTube's surprisingly large subscription business. (YouTube subscriptions include an ad-free version of the site and a Spotify-like service to watch music videos without any ads.) The significance of YouTube's dollar figure is that it's not far from the $5 billion that the streaming king Spotify pays to music industry participants from a portion of its subscriptions. (A reminder: The industry mostly loves Spotify's money, but some musicians ïsay that they're shortchanged by the payouts.)
Subscriptions will always be a hobby for YouTube, but the numbers show that even a side gig for the company can be huge. And it has bought peace by raining some of those riches on those behind the music. Record labels and other industry powers "still don't looooove YouTube," Lucas Shaw, a Bloomberg News reporter, wrote this week. "But they don't hate it anymore."
The YouTube turnabout may also show that complaining works. The music industry has a fairly successful track record of picking a public enemy No. 1 — Pandora for awhile, Spotify, YouTube, and more recently apps like TikTok and Twitch — and publicly browbeating it or playing one rich company against another to get more money or something else they wanted.
While the article cites concerns that YouTube is still paying too little (and failing to stop piracy), "just maybe, YouTube has shown that it's possible for digital companies to both upend an industry and make it stronger."
Hackers Explain How They Stole Wealth of Data From EA (vice.com) 50
A representative for the hackers told Motherboard in an online chat that the process started by purchasing stolen cookies being sold online for $10, and using those to gain access to a Slack channel used by EA. In this case, the hackers were able to get into EA's Slack using the stolen cookie. "Once inside the chat we messaged a IT Support members we explain to them we lost our phone at a party last night," the representative said.
Hackers Steal Wealth of Data from Game Giant EA (vice.com) 39
France Fines Google $268M for Adtech Abuses and Gets Interoperability Commitments (techcrunch.com) 9
Commenting in a statement, L'Autorite's president, Isabelle de Silva, said: "The decision sanctioning Google has a very special meaning because it is the first decision in the world to look into complex algorithmic processes. Auctions through which online display advertising works. The investigation, carried out particularly quickly, revealed the processes by which Google, relying on its considerable dominant position on ad servers for sites and applications, was favored over its competitors on both ad servers and SSP platforms. These very serious practices penalized competition in the emerging online advertising market, and have enabled Google not only to preserve but also to increase its dominant position. This sanction and these commitments will make it possible to restore a level playing field for all players, and the ability of publishers to make the most of their advertising space."
'TikTok Detected My ADHD Before I Did' (theguardian.com) 94
"For 23 years my parents, my teachers, my doctor, my psychologist and my own brain all missed the warning signs, yet somehow it only took that app's algorithm a few days to accidentally diagnose me..." Growing up I had always had a nagging feeling that everyone else in the world was coping better than I was. Somehow they could remember appointments and deadlines, they had the discipline to keep an updated planner and they didn't drift off daydreaming in the middle of important conversations... I just felt like there were 10 TVs constantly switched on in my head, and with so much going on, all the small things would fall through the cracks. It wasn't until I downloaded TikTok that I truly considered I might have the disorder.
See, the app is based around the "for you" page which curates a stream of videos for you. It starts out pretty generic, but as you "like" some videos, and quickly scroll past others, the app's algorithm builds a profile of you and your interests. And that profile is scarily accurate sometimes. It genuinely knew me better than I knew myself. What I think happened is that the algorithm noticed that every time a video titled something like "Five little known signs of ADHD in women" showed up on my feed I would watch it, fascinated, all the way to the end.
So, like the dystopian capitalism machine it is, the app showed me more and more of these videos desperate to keep me on the app and extract every possible advertising cent my eyeballs could buy. But, as a side effect, all of a sudden I was seeing ADHD content made by women and for women, for the very first time. It was like someone putting everything that always felt weird in my brain into words. Forgetting something exists if you can't see it could be a problem with "object permanence". Being unable to stand up and tidy my apartment, despite desperately wanting to, might not be laziness; it could be "executive dysfunction". Suddenly it occurred to me, maybe I wasn't somehow just "worse at being a person" than everyone else. Maybe I simply didn't have enough dopamine in my brain. I can't overstate how liberating that felt.
So I booked a doctor's appointment, and three referrals, four months and about $700 later my new psychiatrist looked straight into the webcam and said: "Yes, I think you clearly have ADHD and you've had it for your whole life." I cried from joy when he said it.
Mental health experts told me it wasn't actually that surprising that hearing first-hand accounts of neurodivergence is what finally made the pin drop. In fact, Beyond Blue's lead clinical advisor Dr Grant Blashki said social media could be an extraordinarily powerful tool for increasing what the medical community refer to as "mental health literacy". In fact "learning you have ADHD on TikTok" is now such a common phenomenon that it's become its own meme on the app. There isn't any hard and fast data on the phenomenon but just from my own experience, since telling my friends about my diagnosis, no less than four people have come back to me saying they reckon they might have it too...
At the end of the day I am so grateful for TikTok, and the creators that make ADHD videos. That algorithm has profoundly changed my life, undoubtedly for the better.
Startup Stealth Data Working To Uncover the Identities of Website Users (bizjournals.com) 111
Stealth Data's third co-founder Chad Sneed experienced marketing frustrations firsthand through his family's dealership, Dennis Sneed Ford in Gower, Missouri. Sneed, who's a vice president and partner, said the dealership spends a significant amount on marketing, from search engines to third-party advertising. A bulk of the dealership's website visitors were anonymous, however, which meant it couldn't follow-up with visitors to try and close a sale. Sneed wanted to unlock that information and started talking to the dealership's outside marketing firm, Phame Influence, to see if it was possible. Puckett, who co-founded Phame with Paris, also is a trial lawyer.
"My lawyer hat instantly says no," Puckett said.
But after digging further, he discovered it's legal and that using the information for cold calling and emailing is fair game.
Co-founder Chad Sneed noted that he doesn't see any privacy issues.
UK and EU Investigate Facebook Over Unfair Use of Data in Digital Advertising (theguardian.com) 6
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said it would work "closely" with the European commission to determine whether Facebook might be stifling competition by "abusing a dominant position in the social media or digital advertising markets." Facebook, which could be fined by regulators depending on their findings, has said that the investigations were launched "without merit."
Twitter Debuts Subscriptions To 'Super Users' in New Revenue Push (bloomberg.com) 47
Google is Making it Harder for Android Apps To Track You Once You've Opted Out (theverge.com) 16
YouTube Channel Remembers and Preserves Ads From US Military's TV Service (stripes.com) 18
And that's where things get creative...
Killer vending machines, security-conscious hamsters and a roommate who devolves into a caveman. These are some of the memorable features of Garry Terrell's vast collection of military-grade videos from the American Forces Network and its predecessor, the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service. The son of a former U.S. soldier, Terrell is trying to preserve "all things AFN/AFRTS," and boasts over 3,600 videos on the YouTube channel AFRTSfan. He began his collection nearly three decades ago, after learning that little had been done to save the many AFN spots that serve as a touchstone for troops and military families who've lived overseas.
The military-made productions fill what would normally be ad time in broadcasts back home... Because they're broadcast across various theaters, the ads served as "kind of like this bonding thing" for kids' friend groups frequently reshaped by duty station changes, said Sabine Brown, an airman's daughter who grew up in Germany in the 80s and 90s. For Terrell, whose mother is German, "it was just my local TV and radio provider" growing up on the bases where his father served as a career U.S. soldier in the 70s and 80s. He took it for granted until the early 90s Base Realignment and Closure process threatened to shutter bases he'd grown up on.
"Fearing that AFN might also go away, I decided to try and collect some AFN radio and TV items to add to my ever-growing memory book of Germany," he said in an email. "I felt like I was in a race against time."
He began contacting and befriending AFN staff and alumni, growing his collection through contributions from his expanding network of AFN insiders and "superfans." He started sharing this burgeoning library on YouTube over a decade ago, creating something of a time capsule, with spots that run the gamut from cringe-inducing, silly or lame to fun, brilliant and truly memorable.
The article notes that the videos once were even affectionately lampooned in a duet by two folk-singing Air Force pilots — which apparently remembers, among other things, the AFN ad illustrating the importance of the power-of-attorney by re-dubbing an old Hercules movie.
Facebook and Instagram Confront Historically Bad 'Reputational Crisis' in the Middle East (nbcnews.com) 81
The shift corresponds with the widespread belief by pro-Palestinian and free speech activists that the social media company has been disproportionately silencing Palestinian voices on its apps — which include Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — during this month's Israel-Hamas conflict... Instagram has taken the greatest reputational hit, according to a presentation authored by a Dubai-based Facebook employee that was leaked to NBC News, with its approval ratings among users falling to a historical low.
The social media company regularly polls users of Facebook and Instagram about how much they believe the company cares about them. Facebook converts the results into a 'Cares About Users' metric which acts as a bellwether for the apps' popularity. Since the start of the latest Israel-Hamas conflict, the metric among Instagram users in Facebook's Middle East and North Africa region is at its lowest in history, and fell almost 5 percentage points in a week, according to the research... Instagram's score measuring whether users think the app is good for the world, referred to as 'Good For World,' has also dropped in the region to its lowest level after losing more than 5 percentage points in a week...
The low approval ratings have been compounded by a campaign by pro-Palestinian and free speech activists to target Facebook with 1-star reviews on the Apple and Google app stores. The campaign tanked Facebook's average rating from above 4 out of 5 stars on both app stores to 2.2 on the App Store and 2.3 on Google Play as of Wednesday. According to leaked internal posts, the issue has been categorized internally as a "severity 1" problem for Facebook, which is the second highest priority issue after a "severity 0" incident, which is reserved for when the website is down. "Users are feeling that they are being censored, getting limited distribution, and ultimately silenced," one senior software engineer said in a post on Facebook's internal message board. "As a result, our users have started protesting by leaving 1 star reviews."
Internal documents connect the reputational damage to a decline in advertising sales in the Middle East. According to the leaked presentation, Facebook's ad sales in the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Iraq dropped at least 12 percent in the 10 days after May 7.
NBC adds that pro-Palestinian civil society group believe Israel is flooding Facebook with reports of violations. "The Israeli government is spending millions on digital tools and campaigns targeting social media content," said Mona Shtaya from 7amleh, a nonprofit that focuses on Palestinians' digital rights.
The article points out that Israel "also funds a program that pays students to post and report content on social media in what is described as 'online public diplomacy.'"
YouTube Takes Down Ads Showing Belarusian Blogger's Possibly-Forced Confession Video (restofworld.org) 39
By Tuesday the Guardian reports there was a "confession" video which the blogger's father said his son had clearly been physically coerced into recording.
And then... YouTube ran advertisements featuring confession videos published by Belarusian authorities of detained journalist and activist Roman Protasevich and his girlfriend Sofia Sapega, according to a number of people on social media...
The YouTube advertisements appear to have been purchased by a pro-government channel with less than 2,000 subscribers with a name which translates to "Belarus, country for life." The channel has published a number of viral videos about Belarus and its logo features the Belarusian presidential flag... Screenshots posted online suggest the ads displayed Protasevich's confession video to viewers and directed them to a pro-government Telegram channel with almost 80,000 subscribers. At least one person on Twitter also reported seeing another ad from the same channel featuring Sapega's confession tape.
A spokesperson for Google, which owns YouTube, said the company had identified both of the ads and took action against them according to its inappropriate content policy. "YouTube has always had strict policies around the type of content that is allowed to serve as ads on our platform," the spokesperson said in an email. "We quickly remove any ads that violate these policies." YouTube generally allows advertisers to run political ads, but its rules around inappropriate content prohibit those that "single out someone for abuse or harassment; content that suggests a tragic event did not happen, or that victims or their families are actors, or complicit in a cover-up of the event."
The advertisements raise questions about YouTube's ability to effectively moderate how its platform may be used to amplify questionable content in ads...
Tadeusz Giczan, editor-in-chief of NEXTA, the independent media organization Protasevich previously worked for, said on Twitter that Belarus officials have long used YouTube advertisements to spread propaganda. "Fun fact: for almost a year Belarusian state news agency BelTA has been using hostage videos like the one with Roman Protasevich as paid ads on YouTube with links to their network of pro-govt telegram channels," he wrote. "We tried everything but YouTube says there's nothing wrong about it." Last year, several people complained online about YouTube advertisements promoting Belarusian government propaganda seemingly from the same channel.
YouTube did not immediately answer follow-up questions about whether it had previously taken action against the "Belarus, country for life" account.
Freenode Apologizes as Prominent Open Source Projects Switch to Libera Chat (ubuntu.com) 122
For Ubuntu, and many other FOSS projects, Freenode has long been one of the major official forms of communication... With IRC channels often used for important system advice, and project communication, this becomes not just an inconvenience but even a security problem. For this reason Ubuntu's replacement network, libera.chat has a more clearly open organisational structure than Freenode had before being taken over.
"All told, it appears something like 700 irc.freenode.net channels have been seized and re-permissioned," reports The Register, "supposedly because the channels mentioned Libera Chat in violation of Freenode's advertising policy."
Wednesday Freenode owner Andrew Lee posted a blog post explaining that "in retrospect, we should have handled the action of closing down channels slightly differently..."
"The intent of doing this was not an attempt of a hostile takeover nor hijack like many people are saying. Since certain projects were disrupting their users' ability to chat on freenode via mass kicks, force closures, spam, we decided to enact this policy in those places which were deemed in violation and could cause an issue later...
"We believe we should have done this in a much more communicative way to circulate the right message and keep things transparent which of course did not happen. As we move forward I'd like to fully assure you that we will be working in complete commitment to restore projects, namespaces and channels that were closed on accident as a part of this event and we welcome them to use freenode as before as their very own homebase.
"Lastly, there are no excuses for this, and I'm willing to admit that I was wrong with Tuesday's move and apologize for the inconvenience that may have caused."
Google Nears Settlement of Ad-Tech Antitrust Case in France (wsj.com) 2
The authority also alleged other forms of self-preferencing between Google's advertising technology tools, they added. To settle the French charges, Google has offered to improve the interoperability of AdX with advertising servers run by other companies, as well as to remove some other obstacles faced by competitors, some of the people said. The settlement still must be approved by the authority's board, which could reject the deal, the people said. If approved, the settlement could be announced in coming weeks, they said.
EU Guidelines Target Tech Giants Over Monetising Disinformation (financialpost.com) 37
"Disinformation cannot remain a source of revenue. We need to see stronger commitments by online platforms, the entire advertising ecosystem and networks of fact-checkers," EU industry chief Thierry Breton said in a statement. "We need online platforms and other players to address the systemic risks of their services and algorithmic amplification, stop policing themselves alone and stop allowing to make money on disinformation, while fully preserving the freedom of speech," she said. Signatories to the code, which was introduced in 2018, include Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Mozilla, TikTok and some advertising and tech lobbying groups.
Amazon's Ad Revenue Is Now Twice As Big As Snap, Twitter, Roku and Pinterest Combined (cnbc.com) 11
They also cited the company's presentation at the recent IAB NewFronts that discussed the company's efforts in the streaming space. Amazon said early this month its ad-supported streaming video content now reaches more than 120 monthly users every month, driven by platforms like Twitch. Amazon generated $22.4 billion in ad revenue in the past 12 months, up 65% year-over-year, according to Loop. That was 2.4 times the $9.3 combined revenue total of middle-cap ad platforms Snap, Twitter, Roku and Pinterest, which grew by 38% over that same timeframe.
YouTube Can Now Monetize Smaller Creators' Videos All Around the World (telegraphindia.com) 117
The creators/uploaders will not earn any revenue from these promotions...
"You grant YouTube the right to monetise your content on the service (and such monetisation may include displaying ads on or within content or charging users a fee for access)," said the updated terms of service. "This agreement does not entitle you to any payments...." This was already in effect in the U.S. from November last year and will now be extended across other geographies effective from June. According to industry observers, the change in terms of service is motivated by the fast growing revenue channels from YouTube advertisements. For the March quarter of 2021, Alphabet, Google's parent, earned a revenue of $6 billion from YouTube advertising, posting a year on year growth of 49 per cent...
Philipp Schindler, senior vice president and chief business officer, Google explained to the analysts on what is driving such growth... "Advertisers are using YouTube now to reach the audiences they can't find anywhere else. And remember, more 18-to-49-year-olds are actually watching YouTube than all linear TV combined...." According to official figures, over 2 billion logged in users visit YouTube every month and every day people watch over a billion hours of video on the platform...
"Today there are two models in place - either the subscriber pays or the advertiser pays. It is inevitable that all platforms will follow one or the other and viewers and content creators have to accept that," said a media and entertainment industry analyst requesting anonymity.
YouTube reminds users that its Terms of Service also "already state that you cannot collect any information that might identify a person without their permission. While this has always included facial recognition information, the new Terms make that explicitly clear."