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Amazon's quest for housing at its QG2 was always unpleasant. Even when it seemed like a fair fight, it was depressing to see so many cities rocking in front of a tech giant hoping to reap job gains and investments in infrastructure. Today, after a nationwide search, the entire cascade turned out to be a trick – Amazon's unique HQ turned out to be a pair of regional offices, and they would be located in two zones. thriving metropolitan areas of strategic importance to Amazon that did not lack space. good paying jobs to start.
Here, I rarely write on Amazon, but I make an exception today, if only because his move represented such a clash between advanced technology and our democracy. It also triggered a violent reaction that ricocheted around social media and drew the attention of elected officials – and I wonder if Amazon, as the least socially aware of big tech companies, is ready for the future .
My colleague Colin Lecher has the details of the agreement in The edge:
Amazon has just announced the sites of its QG2. Soon, the company will expand to Long Island City, Queens and Arlington, Virginia. According to the distribution giant, the expansion will have 25,000 employees in each of these areas, and the company has announced that it will invest $ 5 billion in the offices. Already, the announcement raises questions about what the agreement will mean for cities, about the scope of the agreement and about how Amazon has conducted the research. With potential grants of more than $ 2 billion available at all three sites, covert and spectacular research seems to have paid off.
The incentives that the company will receive under these contracts are already impressive: Amazon has announced that in New York, it will benefit from a refundable tax credit of up to $ 1.2 billion, linked to the job creation, as well as $ 325 million in cash. development grant. The company will also obtain cash grants of up to $ 573 million for Arlington's investment if it creates the jobs promised. Amazon has announced the construction of an operations center in Nashville and plans to create 5,000 corporate jobs in the city.
These subsidies stir fury. This is Taylor Telford in the Washington Post:
Politicians have expressed concern that the influx of technology workers will fuel inequities and harm low-income populations. Others criticized the company for settling in obvious cities after a lengthy search that resulted in 238 deals, including many smaller cities needing the "transformation" promised by Amazon.
While New York Governor Andrew Cuomo implored Amazon to come to New York, saying that he would "change his name to become Amazon Cuomo if that's what it takes," politicians locals were wary of this agreement. Prior to this announcement, New York City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer and Senator Michael Gianaris issued a joint statement in the Yonkers Tribune criticizing the use of "scarce public resources" as "well-being". to be massive companies ". Now, Van Bramer and Gianaris team up with local activist groups to protest Amazon's projects on Wednesday.
An advertisement for their event reads in part: "Say no to the richest society in the world, robbing over a billion dollars of public funds allocated to our schools, our public transportation and our housing."
Meanwhile, the Democrats of the New York State Assembly are also planning to make their own stunt. This is David Sirota in Capital and Hand:
Democrat Ron Kim announced he would introduce a bill to substantially reduce New York's economic development grants and use the money to buy and write off student debt, an initiative that would make the economy more dynamic. economy of that state. The law, says Kim, would stop any offer of taxpayer money to Amazon by the Cuomo administration, which could benefit from tax incentives of up to a billion dollars if it moved in Long Island City.
What action do you think will be best on social media: providing Amazon with $ 1 billion in incentives or debt relief for a university student in New York? (Davey Alba collects many more indignant tweets among politicians and others here at BuzzFeed.)
Of course, Amazon might object that it was simply a matter of following a well-established business guide. Derek Thompson arranged just How common in a surprising room L & # 39; Atlantic:
Each year, US cities and states spend up to $ 90 billion on tax breaks and cash grants to encourage businesses to move from one state to another. That's more than the federal government spends on housing, education or infrastructure. And since cities and states can not print money or accumulate large deficits, these agreements use limited resources of anything that local governments would have to pay, such as schools, roads, police and prisons.
Over the last 10 years, Boeing, Nike, Intel, Royal Dutch Shell, Tesla, Nissan, Ford and General Motors have each received grants worth over $ 1 billion to move their headquarters in the United States or, quite often, to keep their headquarters where they are. New Jersey and Maryland reportedly offered $ 7 billion to HQ2, which would be the biggest corporate gift of American history.
There are many things here to be upset. But I would like to point out something that most people can agree on, in my opinion: how these companies demand a secrecy as strict as the public who gives them social protection checks. Virginia, for example, has agreed to provide Amazon with a written notice of any application for public registration under the Freedom of Information Act "Allow the corporation to apply for a protection order or other appropriate remedy."
This too is disappointing in common. The mayor of San Jose and 17 other elected officials signed a confidentiality agreement with Google as part of an effort to get the city to sign a $ 67 million land deal. Today in Bloomberg, Josh Eidelson reports that activists are suing to publicize the terms of the deal:
City officials have signed agreements "to transform public records, on critical issues such as public transit and environmental compliance, into private recordings that the public does not see," the report said. "The city and Google have made extraordinary efforts to keep the public in the dark."
The agreements are invalid under the San Jose Municipal Code, which prohibits public servants from entering into contracts without the approval of the board and violates current law that prohibits agencies from letting third parties control disclosures to the public, said the complainants.
Perhaps the fury of the regional offices of Amazon will she dissipate. But it's hard not to believe today that the company has misread the play – overestimating the public's appetite for a billion dollar donation to one of the world's largest companies and underestimates the the public's ability to raise hell online and offline. Amazon can still feel this pain in the long run. And in the short term, as Shira Ovide notes, it is the responsible politicians who should be concerned:
Amazon does not have to look far to find the worst possible scenario in terms of a sudden reaction to a publicly funded enterprise expansion. In Wisconsin, opponents of Governor Scott Walker announced billions of dollars in tax breaks and other incentives for a plant built by Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronics manufacturer. Foxconn has modified the project, which may require much less manpower than originally planned. Foxconn's disgruntled citizens mainly blamed their elected officials rather than a distant company. (Walker lost his bid for re-election.) However, if rumors weigh on Amazon in Washington and New York, local officials and Amazon will be sufficiently blamed.
More about this study
Yesterday, I wrote about a new study from the University of Pennsylvania, which found that reducing the use of social media resulted in a decline in depression and loneliness. I had good feedback from people working in the companies involved and wanted to share here.
I wrote to the study's lead author, Melissa G. Hunt, to ask her if in her work she had tried to discover the best use of social media. Here's what she said: "We can not determine the" optimal time "from our data. However, we can say that on average, users who have reduced their use from about an hour to about 25 minutes have achieved better results. Some people in our study used up to 2.5 hours a day. This is clearly too much. "
I've also talked to people who work (or worked) in the companies in question, and they've expressed frustration with studies that bring together all the uses of social media. Sending messages via Snapchat is not the same as browsing Instagram for two hours, they argue. The next generation of studies should make finer distinctions as to the types of social networks that negatively affect people.
The caveat, however, is that most researchers do not have access to this kind of fine-grained data, but only to Facebook. One of the things the company could do is look at ways to make this data available, even anonymously, to researchers in tightly monitored environments.
Finally, I also received an official comment from Facebook on Tuesday afternoon. It's here:
Facebook has not participated in this study, but our teams are working to better understand research on technology and well-being. We want the time people spend on Facebook to be meaningful and positive, and we build tools that consider the well-being of people so that they can better manage their experience. We are determined to continue this work to create safe and inclusive communities for all.
Democracy
Russian trolls reached US users Instagram, Facebook before mid-session
Facebook has released more details about the Russian influence campaign revealed just before the midterm elections. This is Sal Rodriguez. (And here's a deeper dive of the Digital Forensic Research Lab.)
Among the Facebook and Instagram accounts that were linked to Russian trolls before the US mid-term elections this month, one on Instagram had more than 600,000 US followers, Facebook said in a blog on Tuesday. .
A Russian troll farm was linked to more than 100 Facebook and Instagram accounts before blocking them on the eve of the elections, said Facebook.
Facebook has failed to control the processing of user data by its partners
Nicholas Confessore, Michael LaForgia and Gabriel J.X. Dance report that Facebook has not closely monitored agreements with the device manufacturers for which it had created custom versions of the Facebook application. Activists say the company has violated its consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission:
"What is clear is that the F.T.C. failed to enforce the consent order, "said Marc Rotenberg, chair of the privacy group. "And it was very expensive for American consumers."
WhatsApp allocates $ 1 million to misinformation research
WhatsApp funds 20 research projects of $ 50,000 each to study the role that the application plays in disseminating misinformation. Daniel Funke reports:
The research projects have been selected from more than 600 proposals and will examine misinformation in four key areas, including digital culture and misinformation about elections. The winning paper titles extend from "Is fluid correction? How to make factual checks on WhatsApp more effective "to" Use and Abuse of WhatsApp in an African Election: Nigeria 2019. "(See below for the full list.)
According to the press release, WhatsApp will not provide any user data to researchers gathered this week at the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, California, for a workshop on the inner workings of the platform. The company will not participate in the design of the study either. Instead, award-winning studies will rely on qualitative and quantitative surveys to be published in peer-reviewed journals, WhatsApp said in Poynter.
How Joy Reid's Retweet Could Change Twitter
This summer, MSNBC host Joy Reid retweeted an activist who allegedly claimed that a woman was racially scolding a 14-year-old Latin American boy. In fact, they actually had a civil discussion. But Reid's fans had already jumped on the woman in the photo, sometimes threatening her life. Now, the woman sues Reid for defamation, in a case that has important implications for Twitter, Jeff John Roberts reports:
As things stand, the Reid case is troubling, as any results will produce unsatisfactory results. If Liberty prevails, millions of people will face a legal threat to the mundane act of sharing what they see on social media – a situation that would curb freedom of movement. ;expression. But if Reid wins, few things will deter people from contributing to online crowd behavior like the ones who dragged La Liberté into the mud.
This raises the question of whether Twitter and other online platforms should do more to prevent false and defamatory information from becoming viral. An idea to solve the problem – incidentally, suggested by an old Fortune editor– This is a warning system that would allow people in Reid's situation to react more quickly by broadcasting a correction (as Reid did five days later) and by removing the original retweet or shared message from their networks social.
Operation Infektion
Adam B. Ellick and Adam Westbrook have a series of three-part videos on the history of Russian propaganda, from its inception to the present day. Looking forward to dig in this one tonight.
Airbnb and eBay have just said that they will end forced arbitration for sexual harassment
The walkout of Google is another positive development, which already looks like one of the most productive actions that workers have ever seen.
Google's Internet traffic is briefly misguided in Russia and China
It seemed scary until it was an error made by a Nigerian company during a server upgrade.
Somewhere else
A Facebook auction of a young South Sudanese wife could inspire other families – activists
Well it's a terrible use of Facebook:
A photo of the 17-year-old from the Eastern Lakes State of Southern Sudan was posted on Facebook on 25 October. The message indicates that five men were participating in the auction for his dowry.
The highest bidder, a wealthy businessman, reportedly gave the girl's father more than 500 cows, three luxury cars and $ 10,000 for dowry. The teenage girl's wedding took place on November 3, according to the major charity organization for girls' rights Plan International.
Another vulnerability of Facebook could have revealed information about users and their friends.
The security company Imperva has discovered a vulnerability of Facebook that seems at least a bit similar to the one that allowed its recent violation. Dani Deahl writes:
The security company Imperva has released new details about a vulnerability of Facebook that could have exposed user data. The bug allowed websites to obtain confidential information about Facebook users and their friends through unauthorized access to an enterprise API, which caused specific behavior in the Chrome browser. The bug was revealed to Facebook and resolved in May.
On the technical side, the attack is an intersite request forgery using a legitimate Facebook connection in an unauthorized way. For the attack to work, a Facebook user must visit a malicious website with Chrome, and then click anywhere on the site when he is logged into Facebook. From there, attackers could open a new pop-up window or tab to the Facebook search page and run any number of queries to retrieve personal information.
Target's Twitter account was hacked and used for a bitcoin scam
Twitter has an embarrassing problem in which people grab hold of verified accounts and then use them to run Bitcoin scams. Shortly after this story was released, a similar attacker managed to resume the Google Suite account and redo it.
James Woods turns his Twitter account into a "bulletin board" for victims of California wildfires
In a first for him, the actor did something good on Twitter:
Known on the platform for his deeply combative political hats, Woods has turned his Twitter feed in a stimulating signal "display board"For victims, their families and facilities and organizations offering help, tweeting virtually seamlessly since Nov. 8 using the hashtags #CampFireJamesWoods or #SoCalFiresJamesWoods (including his own name, obviously, to differentiate tweets requiring specific amplification). Whether directly or indirectly because of his efforts, many of those he retweeted managed to find their loved ones evacuated, find shelter for evacuated cattle, and reunite lost animals with their owners.
Does Latinx Twitter exist?
Andrea Valdez is looking for an equivalent to Black Twitter for her own culture and finds her elusive:
"I think part of the problem is that we are so complex and not monolithic," says Julio Ricardo Varela, founder of Latino Rebels and director of digital media for Futuro Media. "There are these mini-subsets, such as immigrant rights groups or Twitter from Central America. But [subgroups] sometimes also forming at the expense of other groups, "he says, noting the differences of opinion between the subgroups. A good example of this is the debate on the Latinx word itself, an inclusive term between men and women that started in the LGBTQ community and was slowly adopted in the popular language – much to the chagrin of some who do not agree to break the Spanish sexed grammar rules.
Are you ready for nanoinfluencers?
In this story about having ads published by average citizens of social media, lies a hilarious story about Snap, who is trying to get a male model to promote shows. From Sapna Maheshwari:
The economics of the influencers are opaque – and full of questionable tactics – but there is no doubt that it attracts a lot of money. This was recently reiterated by a public relations firm that sued Mr. Sabbat, claiming that he had not complied with the terms of the agreement with Snap Spectacles. According to the lawsuit, $ 60,000 was offered to Mr. Sabbat for providing an Instagram post and three Instagram stories as well as being photographed during the fashion show while he was wearing glasses.
launches
Your Snapchat friendships now have their own profiles and their own products.
I wrote about Snapchat's new friendship profiles, Bitmoji Merch and Bitmoji Stories:
Snap has long resisted traditional social networking profiles, claiming that a network of close friends did not need them. (You already know what your friends look like and where they go to school, the company said.) But today the situation is changing – at least a little. Snapchat deploys what it calls "Friendship Profiles" to capture all the shared media that you have exchanged with friends and groups in one place. But, according to the company's ethics of confidentiality, the profiles are visible only to you and your friend.
Facebook adopts LinkedIn as a career portal with features for online training, expanded mentoring and jobs
Yesterday, when LinkedIn tested an event feature, I described it as "Facebook in slow motion". Well, here is Facebook is LinkedIn in slow motion.
Best Apps for Instagram Stories Layouts
This is not a launch as such, but Madison Malone Kirchner has a useful overview of the apps that people use to pop their stories on Instagram: Unfold, Canva, Storyluxe and Pic Collage. I am a fan of Unfold myself; I have not tried others yet.
Take
IT propaganda
Renee DiResta traces the evolution of propaganda on social media and warns against a dark future:
These technologies will continue to evolve: the content of the misinformation campaign will soon include video and audio manufactured. We can see it coming but are not equipped to prevent it. What will happen when the video encourages us to be wary of what we see with our own eyes? If democracy is based on informed citizens, the growing proliferation of computer propaganda is a fundamental problem. By a series of unintended consequences, algorithms have inadvertently become the invisible rules that control the fate of millions of people. We must now decide what we will do about it.
And finally …
Beto O'Rourke and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Master Instagram Stories
Are the Democrats just better when it comes to public videos? Nicole Gallucci settles at O'Rourke and Ocasio-Cortez:
Since O'Rourke conceded mid-term elections to Ted Cruz, his main social media medium is Instagram. Since his mid-term loss, O & # Rourke has been eating fleas and guac in the car while driving, doing slime home with his daughter, hiking with his family and even cooking a marinated flank steak in soy, lime, ginger and freaks. Garlic. […]
In the days following the mid-term, [Ocasio-Cortez has] used the social media platform to discuss politics with its 507,000 subscribers by preparing Instant Pot mac and cheese on a Friday night, publicly listening to Janelle Monáe and giving the world a glimpse of what it's all about than to do all that post-campaign laundering that build.
D & # 39; AGREEMENT!
Talk to me
Send me tips, comments, questions and suggestions on areas in which the interface should create HQ2: [email protected].
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