Sips from the Firehose
A blog that seeks to filter the internet into a refreshing, easily-gulped beverage


Jan 18

Truth Vigilantes and Online Reputation

Posted: under Denial of Reality, Digital Migration, new media, New Media and Politics, New Media Strategery, Webscams.

This was originally a comment to Robert Niles’ excellent piece on the Online Journalism Review, on whether or not the New York Times should be a “Truth Vigilante”. I’m republishing it here, because it looks like the commenting feature on OJR (always a little hinky) is b0rked again, and this issue is one that touches a really raw nerve in me.

First, the background:

On Friday, Arthur Brisbane, the public editor (I guess it’s another way of saying “Ombudsman” or “Sacrificial Flak-Catcher”) of the New York Times published a now-famous piece, asking, Should the Times be a Truth Vigitlante?

I’m looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news
reporters should challenge “facts” that are asserted by newsmakers they
write about.

(snip)

This message was typical of mail from some readers who, fed up with
the distortions and evasions that are common in public life, look to The
Times to set the record straight. They worry less about reporters
imposing their judgment on what is false and what is true.

Is that
the prevailing view? And if so, how can The Times do this in a way
that is objective and fair? Is it possible to be objective and fair when
the reporter is choosing to correct one fact over another? Are there
other problems that The Times would face that I haven’t mentioned here?

The reaction has been pretty heated. MetaFilter pithily said “Duh.”  Jay Rosen wrote a post name-checking his longstanding criticism of the whole “View from Nowhere” approach adopted by the press. And Gawker snarked that the NYT should instead just make stuff up.

Here was my reaction, republished here:

It’s interesting to see this issue break out into the open like this. In retrospect, the only thing that’s surprising is that it’s taken this long. Consider: internet sites like Snopes & PolitiFact owe their very existence to the breakdown of trust in our existing news institutions on the part of the audience. We read stuff (often sent via e-mail from the semi-mythical disgruntled conspiracy theorist uncle). Checking our newspaper/TV/radio/whatever, there’s a he-said/she-said story. So we go elsewhere to figure out if what we were originally sent is true or not.

Steve Yelvington long ago identified this as the most crucial (but neglected) part of the media in a societal ecosystem: being the “Town Expert.” (The other two roles are of “Town Crier” and “Town Square” – which media orgs more or less have a handle on.)

Can’t tell you the number of proposed startups that came through the Knight News Challenge in the last two years aimed at resolving this basic issue – how can we trust what we read? Many of them are seeking to assign some kind of a numeric “reliability score” to the source of the information. Which is interesting in theory – a published climate scientist getting a 99 score, for example, while a Big Oil-funded hack gets a 12.

But in practice, systems like this would probably fall prey to the same phenomenon that plagues Digg or other sites that rely on crowdsourcing to determine importance/credibility — the efforts of a committed radical few to rig the results in their favor. Still, it would be interesting to see a major media outlet start to offer little links in superscript next to attribution, that lead back to a page describing where that quote came from, who the person is, and what their history/agenda is.

We’re all struggling with the effects of the disintermediation taking place because of web technology – that much is evident to just about anybody working in media, advertising or marketing. The problem is that this is taking place at the end of a long, slow movement toward the utter blandification of content. The reasons for that are complex – some of them have to do with the influence of “risk management” thinking at media organizations, where the litigiousness of modern American society has driven deep-pocketed news organizations to water down stories out of fear, in order to evade expensive libel suits. The rest do have to do with the drumbeat these past 40 years of accusations of “liberal bias” in the press, and the attempts to defuse such accusations by applying the aforementioned “he-said/she-said” construction to stories, so that we can say, “Well, at least we gave them a chance to reply.”

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Mar 22

Cookie Abuse: Absurd Expiration Dates & How to Fix This

Posted: under Conspiracy Theories, Digital Migration, New Media Strategery, Web Tech, Webscams.
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Doop-de-doop, just adjusting the settings on Safari so’s it doesn’t keep opening up a new window every time I click a link. It’s one of the default settings in Safari that I really deplore. Maybe this made sense back when Safari first came out, and it was common to open new instances of a browser when you were doing something complicated like (gasp!) viewing two of the literally dozens of websites that were then in existence — at the same time! Wowee-zowie! It makes no sense for Safari to have defaults that make it act like Internet Explorer 3.0 or Netscape Navigator.

(Aside: have you ever tried to explain to someone younger than 20 what it was like to be “mousetrapped” back in the day? Do any of you remember what being “mousetrapped” on your browser was like? Hello? Is this thing on…?)

Anyway, I happened to click on the Security tab and then the Show Cookies button. Here’s what I saw:

list of absurd expiration dates for browser cookies

This is a short list of the cookies on my Mac. I've expunged some of the scary-looking hexcode on the right. Pay attention to the dates in the column in pink.

Yeah, that’s right. Some of the cookies on my computer won’t expire until nearly 30 years after I hit my 100th birthday. Most of the others will (supposedly) stay resident and not expire for another quarter-century.

Who does this? I mean, really? Is it really sensible in any way to assume that this computer, as much as I love & use it on a daily basis, will still be alive and kicking in more than 10 years? Or even 5? Have these guys even heard of Moore’s Law? I’m not bumming specifically on Lynda.com, because there are many other offenders, different only in degree.

But really, this is user abuse. Why would you cram something onto my machine that is so obviously useless, unless

  1. You figure your average user is too thickwitted to actually delete their cookies regularly, the way most websavvy users do (or at least try to – more about that in a bit)
  2. You arbitrarily picked a date far into the future because you couldn’t be bothered to take the extra 30 seconds to actually consider the needs of your audience;
  3. You are being sneaky and underhanded, and you’re either planting what amounts to spyware on my computer, or you are actively engaging in the practice of Zombie Cookies.

It is #3 above that really gets my goat. It exploits the users’ trust, relying on the same obliviousness that makes so many of us just click on the “I Agree” button when faced with these labyrinthine EULAs & suchlike. This is short-term thinking. And it is wrong.

This has changed the way that I look at the sites that have placed these kinds of hidden, ill-considered material on my computer. I pass this on in the hopes that other users voice their concerns as well — only if enough people start becoming aware of shady practices like this will companies start policing themselves.

Useful stuff: If you want Safari to stop acting like Internet Explorer/Netscape circa 1997, here’s what you do:

  1. Under the Safari menu, click on “Preferences” (⌘,)
  2. Click on the Tabs tab (and yes, I know how that sounds, but that’s what it is)
  3. Click on the pulldown menu next to “Open pages in tabs instead of windows” and choose anything other than “Never”

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Dec 16

How the Online Trojan/Virus Hackers Make Money

Posted: under adsense clickfraud, Spam, Unconventional Research, visual storytelling, Webconomics, Webscams.

This is a great flow chart, explaining how the Dark Side of the internet uses your unwary clicks to generate real money. (h/t ComputerSchool.org)

It’s interesting to see the actual breakdown of how stealing your passwords and compromising your bank accounts can pay off for fraudsters. I was surprised to see that bank account passwords are not as valuable as I thought – only a 1% return, because of “risks for withdrawing the money.” Woulda thought the scammers were better than that – a couple years ago, my accounts were drained using withdrawals from ATMs at casinos out in the No-Man’s-Land between LA and Vegas. Guess they must’ve patched that particular security hole.

Anyway, this is one of the more interesting (and frequently alarming) flow charts I’ve run across in a while.

Malware.

Infographic by Computer School

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Jan 06

An Explanation of Trackback Spam (abbreviated)

Posted: under Memetagging, Online (Multi)Media, Web/Tech, Weblogs, Webscams.

This post is being used as a means to demonstrate what a legitimate trackback looks like, and how it should be used.  The site it’s pinging is Dave Mitchell’s "Sparsely, Sage…" blog about West Marin County – a freshly hatched blog that is already building up some impressive traffic stats.

Usually a trackback is a comment that someone is making on something you wrote that is hosted on their site.

Let me explain.

Say you write something about the Bolinas Water Board.  Someone from
the board reads it and wants to respond.  This person also has a blog
(or website).

Only their response won’t fit into the small space alloted for comments.

So what they do is write a long response with charts, graphs and
photos, all in support of your brilliant proposition that the Bolinas
Board should just hook up the sewage outflow pipes to the water inflow
pipes to create the perfect closed system.

The Board member then publishes this article on their blog and in the
little space that says "Trackback" – they put in the web address for
your article.

Now the real fun begins.  The Board member’s site sends a "ping" (like
in the old submarine movies) to your site saying in effect "Hey,
there’s this article here that says that it’s related to what you
wrote. Here’s the first paragraph and a link to the article."

Then, in your comments section, a little comment appears that starts
out with the first 200 or so characters of whatever the Board member
wrote, usually something like "I was reading Dave Mitchell’s brilliant
blog the other day, and his innovative (albeit stinky) solution to the
Bolinas Water problems sparked a thought …" (click here for more)

Readers of your blog then can click the link to find out what it is
that the Board member has to say. It’s a nifty little bit of technology
that bloggers use to engage in backscratching, logrolling,
one-hand-washing-the-otherism.

One of the things that it does is to help bloggers boost each other’s
rankings on Google and Technorati. These search engines look to see how
important a blogger/website is by checking to see how many people are
linking to its content.  If you have a lot of original content, a lot
of people will link to you, saying "Hey, I read this really original
bit of news the other day…"

Thus, Google, Technorati, Blogpulse, et al., all figure that you are
someone that is actually putting in work, coming up with interesting,
original content, and that as such, you should be rewarded for that.

Now then. (Cue ominous music) The unscrupulous scam artists on the web
have figured out that using trackbacks is a really great way to boost
themselves up in the Google et al. rankings.  Long enough, at least,
for them to be able to sell whatever it is that they’re selling ("Fix
your credit report!" "Get a 500 free porno movies" "Win at online
poker!") before people figure out that they’re scam
artists/thieves/stealing credit card numbers for their white slavery
ring in Belarus.

Thus, once a website/blog starts getting to a certain level, the
spammers start sending trackback spam. Because if there’s a link to a
highly-ranked website, it tricks Google et al. into ranking their scam
site a bit higher. In effect, the spammers start trading in on your
good name and reputation to boost their own criminal enterprise.

The print equivalent would be someone sneaking into your printing press
and stuffing a one-page snake-oil ad into the Light before it gets
distributed.  Actually, that’s comment spam – which is somewhat
self-explanatory.

I guess trackback spam would be analogous to someone dressing up like a
Point Reyes Light paper deliveryman and going around the West Marin
neighborhoods and delivering the paper by knocking on the front door
and distracting the housewife – whilst a confederate sneaks around the
back, jimmys the kitchen door and makes off with Grandma’s silver and
the Franklin Mint Commemorative Elvis Presley dinnerplate collection.

This is why you get notifications as to when someone posts comments or
trackbacks to your site.  That way, you can see if it’s from a
legitimate commenter with something to say – or if it’s a guy in a
black-and-white striped shirt with a Zorro mask tied around his eyes,
wanting to borrow your delivery van for a few hours "to run some
errands."

Moving on.

In your case, from what I can see, the comments are not from an outside
source or scammer. It appears that for whatever reason, when you posted
the new table of contents, with links to all your stories, what that
did was trigger the technological "trackback" widget, which took the
first few grafs of your post and then put it into your comment section,
and sent you the notification to say "Whadday think about this guy,
boss? Should we let him take the van? He says his granny is real sick
and needs her medicine."

In this case, the guy asking for the van … is you.

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