There’s still an ongoing investigation of last Friday’s terrorist attacks in Paris that killed over 120 people. Saturday, I talked about how technology helped people reunite with loved ones. But now, after reading a disturbing report, I’m left asking myself a question. Did technology help the terrorists?
Some online articles say terrorists use PlayStation 4 consoles to plan and coordinate the Paris attacks. They would have used the consoles to secretively communicate, away from law enforcement’s prying eyes. Belgian authorities found a PlayStation 4 as they arrested several suspects involved in the attacks. Legal and technological experts agree PlayStation is far more difficult to keep track of than communication through smartphones. One expert explains, “It?s still difficult for investigators to monitor IP-based voice systems compared to say, a simple cellphone…”. But it’s not just verbal communication that worries law enforcement agencies around the world. In a game called Super Mario Maker, someone can send a message through using the gold coins, and that message can thwart even the most experienced law enforcement officials and intelligence agents. In May 2015, an Austrian teenager was indicted on terrorism charges. Guess how he was caught? They found plans to make a bomb not on his smartphone or social media pages, but on his PlayStation.
Let’s make one thing clear. I’m not saying PlayStation is bad and is the root to all evil. Like all video games, it can be used for good. PlayStation can also be used to bring people together, enhance problem solving skills, and it’s games often enforce teamwork. So once again, it’s not the game or the console. It’s the human being behind the console. And I hope international law enforcement agencies don’t use this as an excuse to further spy on our technology products. But they probably will. Let’s not give up our civil liberties. Benjamin Franklin once said, “Those who give up liberty for a little safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” So how do we keep the balance between fighting terrorism and keeping liberty?
As we approach the holiday season, most of us could use some extra cash. There’s a Twitter app that says they can help.
The app is called One Cash. This app lets you give and receive one dollar per tweet. The app is free and it’s said to be simple. When you want to reward a fellow Tweeter (is that how you say it?), turn on the app and find their Twitter handler. Make sure it’s their exact Twitter handler to successfully find them. Then, send them the dollar by swiping up on their profile image. If they don’t have One Cash yet, they’ll be tweeted a dollar is coming their way, where it’s coming from, and encouraged to download One Cash. They have a week to accept the money. If they don’t, then it’s returned to your account. If the recipient already has the One Cash app on their profile, click the link. Of course, that link takes you to that same website urging you to download the app all over again. Hopefully, that kink will soon get worked out. Just ask One Cash founder Stanislas Coppin. Even he’ll tell you aspects like people searching and logging on needs improving.
Rome wasn’t built in a day. Neither is a social media app. But Coppin and his team should not delay in improving these kinks. It the holiday season. One Cash has lots of potential to make Christmas very merry for a lot of people. Just think, someone can make money by tweeting cooking tips. Someone can make money by tweeting shopping suggestions. They can make money by tweeting movie, TV, music or restaurant reviews. Here’s a scary thought: Someone can even promote this upcoming election through One Cash and get dollars for it. Oh no! Say it ain’t so! What would you tweet for cash?
It’s been two years since Edward Snowden revealed the NSA and other government agencies are spying on our technology. One would think this would stop, or at least slow down, right? Wrong!
According to a Facebook biannual report, Facebook has received more data request from law enforcement agencies in 2015 than ever before. In the first half of this year alone, Facebook got over 41,000 of them. That’s an all-time high. It’s 18% higher than the second half of 2014. The rise of hidden content due to local law violations has more than doubled. Don’t worry my fellow Americans: hardly any of that hidden content comes from our nation. In fact, 75% of such censorship comes from India! India’s censorship laws are so strict the authorities insist Facebook’s Computer Emergency Response Team hide any content that criticizes the Indian government or religion. But the US does lead the league in data request. Of the 41,000+ request, more than 17,000 of them came from the US. In some way, this has affected over 26,500 users. In most of these cases, Facebook did comply in handing over some data. The number one cause of this is search warrants, with 9,737 requests. That’s followed by subpoenas with 3,375 requests.?Other nations that frequently request Facebook data are India, France and Germany.
First off, let’s be thankful for the online freedoms we do have in this country. Can you imagine if our posts were censored based on government, politics and religion? Let’s be thankful for our First Amendment rights and free speech. But free speech doesn’t give you the right to act a fool on Facebook. There’s an age old saying: Everybody is free to make choices; nobody is free from the consequence. So it’s never a good idea to put criminal activity on Facebook! There’s one story where a 12-year-old boy was beaten and someone posted the video on Facebook. Another teenager was caught and reprimanded by local law enforcement. Then there’s a disturbing story where a guy killed his girlfriend and talked about it on Facebook. Incidents like this will require search warrants and subpoenas. I believe in freedom, but I believe in some responsibility. How else can we keep government off our Facebook pages?
In the last several years, there’s been a lot of talk about wealth inequality in this country today. There’s been a lot to back that up. Apparently, the online business is hardly an exception.
According to a USA Today article, ?five Internet companies made an overwhelmingly 70% of online profits so far in 2015. Amazon comes in first. Amazon alone raked in a third of all our Internet dollars this year. Google/Alphabet came in a respectable second. This leading online conglomerate made off with nearly one fourth of our online business. Online bidding giant Ebay placed third. Social media outlet Facebook placed fourth. ?Guess who placed number five? It’s wasn’t Apple. It wasn’t Walmart. It was Liberty Interactive, a media conglomerate that gives us cable shopping networks like QVC and online invitation sites like Evite. But these five companies made the majority of online wealth. In fact, Amazon and Alphabet/Google alone have 57% of all our online wealth. Unfortunately, that leaves little profit for smaller online companies, even for ones that aren’t very small at all. Coupon provider Groupon is one of the top 20 largest Internet based company in the world. Yet they lost over half their revenue in the last year alone. Groupon stocks are trading only at around $3 a share.
Groupon is the one of the largest Internet companies today, and even they’re struggling. So you can only imagine how small online companies are doing, or not doing. You see the problem here? When five conglomerates own most of the wealth, that makes it nearly impossible for others to even survive. And it discourages people from starting an online business, doing for themselves, and achieving the American dream. I can see why there are mergers going on every time I look around. While it might save the smaller entity, it makes the big guys even bigger. The smaller entity feels it has no choice but to merge. So the cycle continues. When our ancestors and forefathers came up with free market enterprise, is this what they had in mind? And what can be done about it?
Yes indeed Facebook triumphs along. For example, Facebook video views have doubled from four billion to eight billions. Keep in mind video hits have doubled in just seven months! And that’s just part of Facebook’s good news.
Facbook has had a Q3 most businesses can only dream of! It’s user numbers have grown to 1.55 billion users. That means 20% of the whole world are on Facebook. As of Q3 2015, one billion people log on daily. It’s made $4.5 billion in revenue, up 11% from last quarter. Their monthly use rate went up too, rising 4% this quarter. Facebook added 4 million users in the US and Canada alone. That’s a good thing because these two nations are Facebook’s biggest money makers. They’re also getting new demographics, like senior citizens. While Facebook use among 15-19 year-olds is fading, they’re making good recruits out of younger teens. But perhaps the best news of all is their international influence. Global internet access, especially in poor and oppressed nations, has been Mark Zuckerberg’s dream. This quarter, he saw morsels of it. Facebook use grows in developing nations. In Q3 2013, countries and continents other than Canada, United States, European countries and Asian/Pacific countries had 144 million active users. Today, those nations have 167 million users.
Some time ago, Zuckerberg began an initiative to make Internet use available for all. We’re not there yet, not by a long shot. But Facebook should be proud of these numbers. I would especially be proud of getting the new users in developing nations. Yes, I could be cynical and say something like,”He wants online access over there so Facebook could get more users and he could make more money.” That may be part of it. But I believe there’s a deeper meaning here. We need computer technology to do just about anything these days. And with the right computer technology, not only can those living in developing nations lift themselves up, but lift their communities up as well. What do you think about Facebook’s triumphs?
Last week, just days before Halloween, I saw a funny, but deep post. It said, “For Halloween, you should be the person you pretend to be on Facebook.” This brings me to this story.
An Australian model named Essena O’Neil quits modeling on social media. She became a star by posting bikini photos and other sexy pictures of herself on Instagram, You Tube and Tumblr. Now, O’Neil is taking them down. She’s now claiming the ‘perfect’ life she portrayed on social media sites was fake. And she’s writing such messages on her perfect looking photos. For instance, on one bikini clad photo, she writes about needing 100 takes and hardly eating that day to make her stomach look good. Another photo shows O’Neil practicing yoga on a beach. But she writes, “Nothing zen about trying to look zen.” Essena O’Neil claims she was paid hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars for these photos. Now she’s deleting all 2,000+ of her photos that she took in the name of money, self-promotion and social approval. Despite the money, modeling contracts, and over a half million followers, O’Neil says she was miserable inside. O’Neil says social media, “Is not real life”. But she’s not giving up the Internet altogether. ?Essena O’Neil renamed her Instagram page “Social Media isn’t Real Life” and will promote deeper causes, like vegan dieting.
This opens up a debate about so-called perfect lives on social media, and so-called images. All that glitters isn’t exactly gold. So when the next time you see the perfect 1950s-style family on your page, don’t envy them too much. You don’t know what they’re going through in real life. The next time you see a sexy body online, you don’t know the circumstances behind the photo, or even if the body is real or photoshopped (there! I said it!). The next time you see someone posing in a big house, maybe it’s not their house. The next time you see someone posing in a big fine car, maybe it’s not their car. And don’t get me started about these fools posting their big wads of money online. How broke are they? I applaud Essena O’Neil for exposing how fake social media can be. She’s right: Social media isn’t real life. What lessons can Essena O’Neil teach us?
