Phil Bradley's weblog

The dangers of being lax with email addresses

I had an interesting experience today. I got an email sent to my [email protected] address telling me that a direct debit to a specific bank account at a specific bank had been set up. My initial response is to complete ignore this as a phishing attempt. However, there were no links to grab my details and the email address from which the email was sent seemed accurate. A few minutes later I got another email addressed to the same account telling me that my account with a 'Groupon' type account had been set up. 

I decided to explore, so went to the site and tried to log in, and of course it told me my password (which I made up on the spot) was wrong, and offered to send me a link to reset it. I agreed and within a couple of minutes I had reset the password and logged into the account. I was then able to see information about who owned it; it was a Phil Bxxxx (name excised to limit embarrassment). I went back through my emails searching for the name and had got an email from a mail order firm cancelling an order to the person with the same name, only this gave me his address. It was the matter of a couple of moments to check this, find out that he runs some websites which linked by name to the Groupon type site, and it also gave me his phone number.

I now had his name, address, phone number, details of his bank, and part of his account number. That's a pretty long way down the road to being able to impersonate him. So I rang him up. I explained who I was, and how I had got as much of his information as I had, and what was going on please? This is where it gets really insane. He's a tech guy who works for a particular company which I won't name, and he was responsible for setting up systems for members of the public to join, and in this specific case get loyalty points and rewards for purchases. So I asked him why he was using my email address? He replied - I didn't think it existed, I just made it up! Seriously? He's email personal details to email accounts that he doesn't know, hasn't checked, and has no way of checking? Moreover, his company is not employed 2 stage verification of email accounts - anyone who had any clue as to what they were doing should have set up a system that emailed my email address and said 'did you really want to set this account up?' I could then have ignored it and got on with the rest of my day. 

I remain gobsmacked.

Blue Whale Update

I'd hoped that the nonsense about the 'Blue whale' suicide game had been a flash in the pan, but it's continuing to be spread. The Daily Mail ran another story on it on May 10th and it's about the 'mastermind' behind it; Philipp Budeikin, who I mentioned in my previous blog post; Blue Whale suicide game or hoax? I don't think there's any doubt that this guy is one very sick individual, and it does look as though he created at least 8 social media groups on the Russian version of Facebook, VKontackte with the express purpose of preying on children. However, that doesn't mean that he invented a game at all, but it's far easier to hook a story on that concept than to have to explain how social media groups work. 

The Daily Mail article is full of inaccuracies, vague accounts and hysteria. There is a reference to Angelina Davydova, 12, who fell to her death from the 14th floor of an apartment block on Christmas Day 2015. Now, there are plenty of people with that name, but I couldn't find any mention of one who killed herself, other than in newspaper reports that quoted the Daily Mail article. What's interesting however is that almost a year previously, on 26th May 2016 the same picture of the girl Angelina is used, but in that story she's referred to as 'Elya Davydova' and the story is all about Russian suicide sites, with NO mention of the Blue Whale 'game'. Either the Mail is guilty of sloppy journalism, or perhaps it thinks we'll be more sympathetic towards a girl with a more Westernised name? 

There's reference to a girl only referred to as 'Anna K'  who according to the Mail hung herself after becoming obsessed with 'the game'. However, Russian newspapers (I've just linked to one) make no reference to how she died, or to any game at all. The inference is that she was just a very confused young woman. The Mail also talks about a girl called Vilena Piven, but again, newspaper reports refer to her being involved with an online suicide group, but there's no reference again to the 'Blue Whale game'. 

The Mail also shows a screenshot of a girl and says "A harrowing photo showing a young girl some seconds before jumping down from a roof". I've searched for this image and the only place I can see it is as a thumbnail for 7 YouTube videos, but she doesn't appear in any of the videos. The Mail also uses typically vague phrases such as "A disturbing video purports to show one Russian girl jumping to her death"  and "it is feared in Russia that dozens have done so at the bidding of Budeikin or other 'mentors". So - no facts, just sensational scaremongering. However, there's plenty more. They say that Budeikin is also known as "Philipp Lis (meaning Fox)". It's true, that surname does mean Fox - but only in Polish. There's no indication that he is Polish, so the reference is pointless, except to further their sensationalism. The Mail also goes on to say that he's getting dozens of love letters from girls, and the Russian authorities are powerless to stop him receiving them. Really? (At this point I should say that I've not had the opportunity of checking out Russian law on what prisoners are allowed to receive, but let's just say that I'm very skeptical.)

Now - to be clear, I'm not suggesting that this guy hasn't done what is claimed - that he has been culpable in the deaths of young Russian woman. However, what I am saying is that there is no reference at all to the 'Blue Whale game' until newspapers started to provide sensationalist coverage of it. Certainly the Mail didn't reference it last year with the piece that they wrote. As a 'game' it's an invention. It's easier to scare parents by using a game concept - but it's also dangerous, because parents will assume that a game can be downloaded as an app, or played online. If they discuss things with their children, it's going in the wrong direction to talk about a game, and a child can very easily deflect attention to their mental health by saying they haven't played any such game or downloaded it. Far from protecting children it's going the other way entirely. 

Moving away from the current scare, I also have an update on conversations that I had previously. I had little luck speaking to the Essex Safeguarding Children Board, so I wrote to them, and got a reply from the Independent Chair. He told me that the board has NOT issued any information about it, which appears to completely contradict what one Deputy Head teacher told me, so someone is getting very confused. he also said 'I am not critical of any local organisations which have sent out such bulletins or tried to raise awareness'.  He goes on; 'busy managers do not have the opportunity to verify all of the information that comes to their attention, particularly when it is already widely available'. This I find astonishing; apparently children's safety isn't worth the time it takes to run a quick check on Google to at least raise a question of authenticity, which could then be raised with another appropriate member of staff, such as the librarian, who could check it in detail. The fact that enough people are spreading fake news and false accounts makes it perfectly acceptable for other people to do so as well. 

Now, does this really matter? I contend that it does. Not only for the reason that I previously mentioned; it allows deflection in a discussion with a child, but it also illustrates to children that adults are not capable of independently checking and verifying information for themselves. Rather than setting themselves up as good examples of information literate internet users they're doing the opposite. Children are not stupid, and they can quickly work out things for themselves, and this will just help confirm that fake news is an acceptable part of life today, because after all, if their teachers are spreading it, it can't be that bad, surely? (My opinion, backed up with discussions that I've had with young people so feel free to ignore!)

If we want children to grown up with good levels of information literacy, an understanding of how to access and verify information we don't achieve this by demonstrating knee jerk reactions to sensationalist stories in the press which are written to get readers, not be accurate. 

Blue Whale suicide game or hoax?

I was first made aware of the 'Blue Whale game' when a concerned parent posted on Facebook a letter that she'd seen from a local school, warning parents about the 'Blue Whale game', which was apparently the cause of hundreds of suicides of young people in Russia, which was on its way to the UK. A second school in my area, then a third sent out the same kind of warning, and another in Basildon also sent letters to parents, based on a discussion with Essex police. The BBC have posted their own article about it, and it's been mentioned in a variety of newspapers, such as the Daily Mail, The Daily Mirror, The Sun and The Metro. The headlines are worrying, to say the least.

"‘Blue Whale’ suicide game linked to 130 teen deaths makes its way to UK",

"Police and schools in chilling warning of ‘Blue Whale’ suicide game that is feared to be heading for the UK and is linked to teen deaths"

"Social media suicide game blamed for deaths of 100 children as parents warned to be vigilant."

"Police warn Blue Whale 'suicide' Facebook game linked to 130 teen deaths in Russia is heading to the UK"

You'll notice that the stories are already inconsistent - 100 or 130? Children or teenagers? My first thought is to head to Snopes and see what they have to say. Their conclusion so far is that it's 'unproven', which isn't as clear cut as Fake, but I'll explain why shortly. Before we get into the nitty gritty, let's take a step back and look at the situation in Russia.

Child suicide in Russia.

To be honest, it's bleak. According to Suicide.org Russia has one of the highest suicide rates in the world; their list of international suicide rates places Russia at #3 behind Luthuania and Belarus. The UK is #62. The number of suicides per 100,000 by age group in Russia is 25.8 for the age group 15-24, and in 2012 the rate of teenage suicide was three times higher than the world average.  (The links go to the WHO and the New York Times). According to the Russian government, 720 minors committed suicide in 2016. Authorities say the main causes are unrequited love, family problems, and mental-health issues. Lack of opportunity and widespread alcoholism and drug abuse are cited as contributing factors. Only 0.6 percent have any connection to the Internet or social media. Interestingly however, articles about the suicides often refer to the fact that they come from happy and stable homes. This may well be true, but on the other hand, it's a far more interesting story, and gives credence to 'victim status' rather than saying that they've killed themselves because of a miserable and difficult home life. However you cut it though, child suicide in Russia is far from uncommon. The Daily Mail for example called them 'happy and normal'. 

Many of the articles refer to young girls who have killed themselves, and there's no doubt that they have actually committed suicide, either by jumping off tall buildings or by walking in front of a train. However, it's at this point when things start to get very confused. There is reference to a teenager Rina Palenkova, (or Renata Kambolina or Rita Palenkova) aged 17 who ran in front of a train in November 2015 and the Daily Mirror states “Police said she had problems with her boyfriend”. Numerous newpapers refer to two girls who have committed suicide by falling to their deaths from a 14 storey apartment block, Yulia Konstantinova, 15, and Veronika Volkova, 16. However, there are questions over the reasons for their suicides; they had been posting depressed and suicidal thoughts to their social media accounts. What is clear is that I haven't found a single account that can categorically be laid at the door of the Blue Whale game. Not a single one. Newspaper reports are very vague with their terminology 'investigators claim', 'some parents claim' and so on, but nothing substantiated.

However, it's very clear that something has been going on in Russia. A May 2016 story from the Russian site Novaya Gazeta reported dozens of suicides of children in Russia during a six-month span, asserting that some of the people who had taken their lives were part of the same online game community on VK.com, a social media network based out of St. Petersburg, Russia. Novaya Gazeta  reported that “at least” eighty of the suicides were linked to these “blue whale” games, but an investigation by Radio Free Europe found that no suicides had been definitively linked to these online communities. Specifically “not a single death in Russia or Central Asia has been definitively tied to Blue Whale”. The Daily Mail wrote an article based on this story in May 2016, asserting that the children were part of the same online game community on VK.com a social media network based out of St Petersburg. It's worth stressing here that an online game community is not the same as playing a specific game. On November 16^th Philipp Budeikin, (or Filipp Budeykin) a 21 year old was detained on organising 8 social network groups between 2013-16 to ‘promote suicide’, but again, this isn't related to a specific game. 

Recent news items

Coming up to date the idea that it's a game which has caused these suicides has resurfaced. Daily Mail published a story on 26 April, which was basically a rehash of the one they published almost a year earlier. Interestingly there is a picture of a whale supposedly cut into an arm, with a copyright to The Siberian Times, but the image isn’t on the Siberian Times website at all. I've not seen any other images, and I'm doubtful that it's actually real; it's very easy to fake an arm cutting. I would have thought that if hundreds of children have been involved with this 'game' there would be many more images than a single one. The TES published an article on the 25th April which is quite frankly laughable in its ineptitude. They make reference to "A descriptive account of the game, posted to a forum dedicated to creepypasta – horror stories and urban legends intended to scare readers – suggests that the master always knows whether or not the tasks have been accomplished." The 'forum' is actually the name of the person who posted a story, and his posting history is all about murders, suicides and death. Far from being a definitive account it's an amateur piece of fiction. The article goes on to make other vague and unsubstantiated claims. "A spokesman for Hertfordshire constabulary told the Cambridge News that it had sent the following message to schools: “The challenge is believed to be spreading across Europe" and "Thames Valley Police have had three suicides recently that are believed linked to this." There is no evidence and no proof. To be fair however, they do say "However, the myth-busting website Snopes says that links between the Blue Whale game and teenage suicides in Russia remain unproven. It states: “It is more reasonable to assume that depressed or suicidal teenagers are simply drawn to the same social media groups, not that the groups were causing them to commit suicide.”

There has been mention made of the role of local police forces. David Wright, deputy headteacher at Woodlands School in the Essex town of Basildon wrote in his letter to parents " “We have discovered a game through the police that we think you should be aware of… It is called the Blue Whale game and is played via many social-media platforms." Now, I have asked Mr Wright for information on which social media platforms, because there's no evidence that I've yet found to substantiate that claim. Interestingly I contacted the media department of Essex Police and they told me that they have been 'made aware' of the dangers of the game. However, when pressed they absolutely refused to give me any more information. They would not say who had told them, or what - if any - evidence they had. I then asked why they were making such unsubstantiated claims, and they denied they were unsubstantiated, but they refused to actually substantiate them. Quite why any police force is going out and warning schools about something and then refusing to back up their claims is puzzling, at the very least!

The Blue Whale game itself

To start with, it's not a game. You can't buy it, download it or install it. It's not an app either. The idea is that you are contacted by, or request to be contacted by a 'curator' who provides a pre-set list of 50 tasks, to be completed once per day. The only place that I've been able to find a copy of the list is a picture of text written in Lithuanian. The two that are making most headlines are "11. Carve a whale on your hand with a razor and send it to the curator" and "50 Jump off a high building". Others include getting up at 4.20am (a reference to cannabis) and watching scary movies, listen to music that 'they' send you and 'talk to a whale'. So the idea that children can innocently start to play this game are entirely false, and the game reference isn't helpful at all. It gives entirely the wrong message to the general public, which leads to fear and suspicion. The 'blue whale' reference has been explained in a number of different ways, but the most obvious is that whales sometimes beach themselves in a deliberate act of suicide. One of the girls who jumped off a building also left a last image of a blue whale on her Instagram account, but once again, that's circumstantial at best as a link to any 'game'.

Brazil

It would appear that Brazil seems to have become the latest 'hotspot' for news items on Blue Whale. I've read several of the articles, and they are all very similar to those that have been written before, down to the same phrases, so I suspect that there's a lot of lazy cut and paste journalism going on. One news article reports on a 16 year old girl who drowned, but there's once again no proof that she was a victim of this 'game'. The deputy chief of police said "We will first check the existence of this game and if there was inducement, instigation or assistance to the suicide or if it was a deliberation of the victim itself.If there is a group of which she participated, we will trace the members that may have some relation with the event , Those responsible will be identified and will be criminally liable for the act. If they are adolescents, they will respond to the infraction" (Apologies for the English - this came from an auto translation by Google). In another reported suicide the article isn't clear on the reason why a child committed suicide "We have had two cases confirmed, and the case we investigated was initially discarded because there was no involvement with the game" according to a member of the Internet Crime Repression Office. In the past month, the Citizens’ Rights Regional Attorney has got Google toe to remove eleven videos that encouraged young people to self-mutilate or even commit suicide. However, the MPF, (Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office (Ministério Público Federal)) however, has not yet opened an investigation against the game Blue Whale. 

Real or a hoax?

Snopes isn't exactly sitting on the fence here with it's 'unproven' claim. Because we're dealing with things that happen in Russia it's always going to be far more difficult to definitively prove that there isn't a causal link between a game that may or may not exist and the suicide of Russian children in a country that has a very high suicide rate. Snopes is always going to err on the side of caution, so it's not a surprising decision on their part. Snopes does say "There is certainly reason to be concerned about groups that venerate and promote suicide, but the creator of the “Sea of Whales” community (on the Russian social network) said that he had no interest in encouraging people to take their own lives. Rather, the group’s creator says that they created the game and the surrounding lore to drive traffic to the page". Any publicity that provides traffic to a group or site is usually seen as good publicity, so if you're wondering why anyone would make up a story about a 'game' of this nature, that's one obvious reason. 

The Net Family News website (tech intelligence for parents) is less cautious than Snopes. They say "It’s truly fake – a textbook example of how misinformation about online harm can itself be harmful." The Bulgarian Safer Internet Centre is also highly critical of the news stories. The point is also made by Georgi Apostolov of the Centre that there has only been one arrest (of Philipp Budeikin) and that was related to user communities, not a 'Blue Whale game'. An investigation by Radio Free Europe that found that no suicides had been definitively linked to these [“guru”-led] online communities. 

Russia’s long-running daily newspaper Izvestia ran an investigative piece on the Blue Whale game. It's in Russian, but if you use the Chrome browser, you can have it translated. Their journalists found that there were indeed thousands of hashtag references to the game, but that these had been created in the main by bots, NOT real human beings. The head of the Regional Public Center of Internet Technologies (ROCIT) Sergei Grebennikov, explained the prevalence of suicidal hashtags which were produced by people. They were created by three types of users; people who want to be in the trend of the game in the "blue whale" to try and see what tasks to perform. Second -  the creators of advertising campaigns who would try and get people to give children tasks such as clicking on a link or downloading an app - not in an effort to self harm, but to make money for the advertisers. The final group were people who are simply interested in the dissemination of information and wanted to see how many people were involved, what they were doing and so on - researching, essentially. Grebennikov also said that the media publicised about 15 cases of suicide which they claimed were as a result of games like "Blue whale", but none of them had been proved. 

I also spent some time looking at YouTube videos about the Blue Whale game. These were virtually all sensationalist with no useful information at all. Several of them included video of suicides taking place, but in every single one that I looked at it was easy to see that they had been faked. A child would be about to jump from a roof, the camera would move away, the sound of a scream would be heard, the camera would pan back to show no child, but also no jump either; very easy for a child to run back and scream at the same time. In another video viewers were informed that an image was available of the young woman who killed herself by jumping under a train, but the 'body' was clearly that of a dummy, the clothing and hair colour was different, the head was very neatly placed on the other side of the rail, there was no blood and so on. Amateur in the extreme. 

Scaremongering

One of the things that really concerns me is the amount of scaremongering that's taking place. Schools are frightening parents based on - as far as I can tell - sensationalist press coverage based on misinterpreted newspaper articles. Essex Police, while encouraging schools to frighten parents are not prepared to provide information on who they have got their information from, or even a single piece of evidence to show this is taking place. The use of the word 'game' is constantly being repeated and is confusing and unhelpful. Serious academic journals such as the TES are reporting incorrectly and in a sensationalist way. Yet this is nothing new. In 2007 'at least 16 young people' had committed suicide after visiting pro-suicide chat rooms. You can even go back to the 1980s with the great panic over the game Dungeons and Dragons with overblown claims that it resulted in Satanic worship, murder and suicide. What's dangerous is the panic, not what the panic is about. In 1990 there was a case in Rochdale in which around twenty children were removed from their homes by social services who alleged the existence of Satanic Ritual Abuse after discovering 'Satanic indicators'. No evidence was found of Satanic apparatus, and charges were dismissed when a court ruled the allegations were untrue. However by then it was too late and the damage was done.

What should you do?

Ask your school for evidence of the claims that they are making, go to the police and ask for instances where this game is being played. Ask the head teacher to be specific about which social networks are being used. Demand evidence and proof to back up these claims. Schools are responsible for the safety, both physical and mental of the children in their care. The more they simply send out knee-jerk scaremongering letters to parents which have no basis in fact, the less they will be trusted, and the one time when there IS a problem it may well be too late, since the school cried wolf once too often. 

The real concern that I have is that it's far too easy to use something like this 'game' to hide real fears and real concerns over the mental well being of children. Parents absolutely should talk to their children about how they are, what they're doing, if they're being bullied and so on, but this 'game' simply steers conversations off onto the wrong track. Talk about reality, get involved with their online lives, friend them on Facebook, share jokes on Instagram, collaborate with them on SnapChat and so on. Be part of their lives, and take real things seriously, and leave hoaxes and sensationalist press coverage where it belongs - in the gutter. Your children are worth more. 

CILIP the err.. library and information association.

I noticed a tweet today:

Librarian game time: Go onto @cilipinfo site (https://t.co/1kFAdSfTjM) and, without using Search, try and find the acronym "CILIP" defined.

— Phil Gorman (@philbgorman) February 28, 2017

He's quite right. It's very difficult to find, and I was only able to see 'Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals' in the title of the site and in some images. In fact, if you look a bit further, it seems to have changed its name. And the logo. And the colour of the logo. And the font...

It appears that the 'Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals' no longer exists. No discussion, no voting, no long, angry meetings, nothing. It's an impressively soft launch. And when I say 'soft launch' I mean 'let's not mention it to *anyone*' and see how long it takes them to notice. I am in quiet hysterics here, I really am. All that pain, anguish and quite honestly pure hatred of a few years ago, and for what? I'm sure someone is going to mention the new abbreviation could be LAIA, which is pretty close to La-la, but I'm only doing it because someone is going to, and it may as well be me.

I actually like the strapline - it's got 'library' and 'information' in there, so it's good for those that like to hark back to our roots and look forward. I'm less impressed with the logo, with it's clipped right corner which is not clever branding or artistic; it's just irritatingly sloppy. The blue is best described as 'meh-blue', because it's neither one thing or another, but hey, anything is better than that god awful pink, right? And of course, it IS just a strapline. CILIP remains, but is now a pointless acronym for a phrase that doesn't exist any more. Necessary, because the 'Chartered' bit is very important, and there's only so far that you can go without involving the Privy Council, or consulting members of course. So, if you want, you can still argue that CILIP retains the name CILIP, but as for what that means, well, that's an entirely different story.

I'm already imagining the conversations - 'Yes, I'm from CILIP, the library and information association'. 'Oh right, so what's CILIP then?' 'Well, umm, it's er... well, the library and information association'. 'So what does CILIP stand for?' 'Well, we don't like to talk about it really...' That conversation could run and run.

I'm fully expecting all of the people who took up arms last time around to do so this time. After all, last time, there were consultations galore, this time it's more a case of 'we're doing this and hoping to keep it quiet', so Nick Poole had best be on the look out for flaming brands and pitchforks outside of Ridgmount Street. It's ok - I checked, they haven't moved the offices to Harrogate or the Outer Hebrides, it's still in the same place. And there's still a President, so that's ok. Though, given the way this was done... who knows?

I'm happy with the changes; it certainly works for me. I'm slightly less happy with the fait accompli nature though. Seriously - not a single communication? Not even an update anywhere? Not a news item? Nothing? That does tend to smack of arrogance and a 'f*ck you' attitude and complete disregard for the member vote we had on the name change a few years back. If I'd argued against it, and voted against it, I would be hopping mad right now, and I'm just wondering if CILIP Council is hoping that people are just too damn tired, scared, worried about other things and worn out to do anything - perhaps the most we'll see is a quiet little 'meh, whatevs' response. But in general....

Well played, Library and Information Association. Well played. I shall now get myself a bucket of popcorn, sit back and crank Twitter up to 11. 

Google's holocaust problem

There are times when I almost (but not quite) feel sorry for Google, because whatever it does, it's going to be wrong. Let's quickly go over the basics again before we start. Google is not a search engine, it's an advertising company using search to make money. Google doesn't care about the results that it provides because it's using its algorithms to work out why one result is better than other. It relies on the world to tell it what's good or bad, and it acts merely as a mirror or a reflection of society. Google is not there to give you the 'right' result, since there isn't a right result. In a sense, that's quite admirable, because it's leaving the user to make up their own mind as to the relevance or authority of a site, and it's not making that call for them. That's all good and wonderful as long as the user is capable and able of making that judgement call, and is savvy enough to realise that what they see is not necessary what is true accurate and correct.  

So if I ask Google 'did the flimflam band exist?' I'm happy enough for Google to return a result that says 'No it didn't, and this is why'. However, when we get to something like the Holocaust, it's a rather different matter, especially when we see this:

Similarly if you do a search for 'Martin Luther King' you'll get a racist site, and if you recall recently if you searched for 'three black teenagers' you got sites that tended to imply that such youths were criminals. As reported on Gizmodo Google says it is "“saddened to see that hate organizations still exist,” but it does “not remove content from [its] search results, except in very limited cases such as illegal content, malware and violations of our webmaster guidelines.” The Google spokesperson made sure to add, “The fact that hate sites appear in Search results does not mean that Google endorses these views.”" This is disingenuous at best, or if your attitude towards Google is like mine, it's a straight out lie. It's a lie because Google quite happily removes material when asked to by Governments for starters - we see this under the 'right to be forgotten' ruling for starters. Furthermore, Google could quite easy, and DOES remove content from search results when it finds 'Google bombs'. These used to exist a lot in the past - do a search for 'liar' and the first result would be a biography of George Bush or Tony Blair for example. Google realised that it was being 'gamed' and changed the system so that it couldn't happen again. 

Google has chosen not to do that this time. It's perfectly obvious that Google is being gamed, with links to that specific result coming from Stormfront itself, the Wikipedia and other right wing/racist websites. As with the MLK example, people link to it, Google decides that's an important indicator of value, and moves the site further up the ranking. In and of itself it's a perfectly acceptable way to help rank results, but as I say, it's open to being abused. I know it's happening, so do you, and so does Google, but Google has chosen to do nothing. I understand why Google doesn't want to remove material - I think the Stormfront site is vile, but that's just my opinion and it shouldn't hold any more weight than that of an extreme right wing racist. Google isn't a global police force, nor should it act like one. 

However, it has a level of responsibility. It's responsible to the people who use their service - just because we don't pay for it it doesn't mean they can skip off into the sunset whistling a happy tune. It's responsible to its advertisers and to its shareholders to provide a service that does the job people expect it to - giving them the information that they want. If I want to see racist websites that deny the holocaust, then Google shouldn't stop me seeing them. However, and this is the thing - there's a difference between that, and giving a site a coveted #1 spot in their results because their algorithm is being played. This is neither moral or ethical, it's a cop out. Google is prepared to intervene to remove instant suggestions that imply that Jews are bad people for example, so their holier than thou 'we don't fiddle with our results' is, as I've said, a blatant lie. 

Let's look at other engines - Bing has the Stormfront page on their first page of results, but interestingly the summary that they use actually contradicts the Stormfront title.  DuckDuckGo has a completely different set of results, all of which start with discussions about holocaust denial, with the Stormfront way down the page. Yahoo (who are they again?) doesn't have it on their first page of results. Yandex does follow the Google line, with the first two results denying that it took place. So it's not a clear cut answer, but there's plenty of ways of insuring that the result which is getting people angry isn't necessarily in a prominent place. So is there any way around all of this?

A solution is obvious - in a small number of cases, such as this, Google could intervene and remove sites in exactly the same way that they have done with the right to be forgotten results, but with one difference. They already have a situation where they show a small number of results but say there are more, but very similar, and does the searcher want the search re-run with all the results available? At the bottom of the page Google could, quite easily, have a link that says 'Some results have been removed from the results but you can view them if you wish'. That way the casual searcher doesn't see racist stuff on their screen, Google hasn't deleted anything, and is still leaving it up to the end user to decide what they want to do with the results they are getting. 

Google is making a choice not to do this, and instead has chosen to leave racist results at the top of the screen. That's their call. Yours is to decide if you want to continue to use it or not. 

Google's fake news link

'Don't trust Google' is something I say a LOT. Here's another example. If you go to the search engine and do a search for 'final election results' this is what you'll see. Well, maybe you'll see it, maybe you won't, depending on where you live, what you search, if you had eggs for breakfast and the colour of your eyes:

Clearly shows that the results are 61,039,676 to Clinton and 60,371.193 to Trump. Now, figures are still not entirely finalised I understand, so the result obviously isn't going to change (and that's decided by the electoral college anyway, not the popular vote).

However, underneath this result is this:

Now, I couldn't get exactly that myself, but on my iPad I was able to see this version:

Now, the site in question is 70news, and the figures that it quotes are simply not true. if you look at their website - I'm not linking, but you can find it at 70news then dot and then wordpress.com/ - you see this:

This figure is still wrong and none of what is said there is right. It's not clear just WHY Google has decided to link to this site, particularly so given that they so recently said that they were going to be fact checking the news! If you want to know the exact results, head across to the Washington Post, which currently has the figures at 61.32 for Clinton and 60.54 for her opponent. A rather different situation. Once again - and I'm sure we can all do this now, so one, two, three, "DON'T TRUST GOOGLE"

A new information dark age

 We have access to more information, quicker, easier, more effectively and at the touch of a button than we have ever had, so why am I not talking about a golden age of information? I'm writing this on the morning that we discovered that Donald Trump has been elected to the White House, and only a few months after Britain committed its own act of national insanity by voting for Brexit. There are many more intelligent people than I am who will be talking about this, but I wanted to look at just one small aspect of both events, and indeed more generally in society from the viewpoint of someone who works with information, and information professionals.

I can go on for hours about how much information is now available to us via social media, but there are plenty of other sites that can go into that for you. However, the amount of data itself isn't the problem, it's what we do, or don't do with it. We don't discriminate. 'It's all on Google' is a cry that we hear all to often, and people seem to think that a search gives us good and accurate information. You and I know that isn't the case; in fact it can be exactly the opposite. However, the vast majority of people will simply look at some results on the first page, see a result that chimes with them, read and accept it. An Ofcom survey in 2015 found that only 60% of adults think that some websites will be accurate or unbiased and some won't be, 23% think that information returned by search engines is true and unbiased and 14% simply don't think about it. We are all too ready to simply accept what we see and read without thinking it through any further, and our own biases and preconceptions end up being reinforced by our own filter bubbles. Lots of reasons for this - we don't have time to check, we're lazy, or we simply want to accept what we read is accurate and doesn't challenge our own world views.

A second problem is that of fake news. There are dozens of websites that claim to provide us with news, but in actual fact, all of the 'news' is made up. The 'National Report' for example describes itself as  "America's #1 Independent News Source" You have to dig deep into the site to find out that all of its articles are fakes (or if you prefer, 'lies') and that it's satire. It's not uncommon to see satire sites being mistaken for genuine news outlets, and their stories get copied, shared and repeated across social media. And of course, that's the whole point; the more outrageous the story, the more people read it, and the more will click on one of the adverts on the page, making in some cases thousands of pounds for the owner of the site. Fake news is big business, and there's no sign at all of this slowing down. Twitter and Facebook don't help matters here, since they just provide another way for people to link to the stories. Facebook got rid of their own human news checkers, and they now rely on automated methods. This has led to a proliferation of 'dust clouds of nonsense' as President Obama described it. There are plenty of other reasons, not just financial, for these dust clouds. A nice juicy click bait story may lead to a website that tries to get you to download malware or viruses. Alternatively it may simply try and get you to visit other websites with the promise of other salacious stories. Of course, some stories will be manufactured to encourage race or religious hatred instead, or to get you to vote in one particular way. The New York Times has recently reported that Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets have exposed millions of Americans to false stories asserting that: the Clinton campaign’s pollster, Joel Benenson, wrote a secret memo detailing plans to “salvage” Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, the Clinton campaign senior strategist John Podesta practiced an occult ritual involving various bodily fluids.

The number of journalists seems to be set to decrease. The same NY Times article points out that the number of journalists has almost halved from the figure that it was in 2000. This is being replaced by citizen journalists who have no ethical or moral background, and are happy to promote their own nonsense. Mike Cernovich is a meme mastermind of the far right in America - the description comes from the New Yorker magazine in their article 'Trolls for Trump.' The memes, tweets and blog posts get thousands of hits and are retweeted, shared and copied. In a social media world where the number of followers seems more important than what's being said, a single individual can easily hold his or her own against traditional media. It becomes increasingly difficult to work out the good from the bad, the accurate from the fake, and the truth from the lie. If someone sees that a person posting on twitter has millions of followers, it's perfectly understandable to think that they have them for a good reason, and it's worth taking note of what they say - particularly if it mirrors your own world view. It's no wonder that faced with this, media groups like the Guardian are set to cut almost a third of all US jobs. What are we left with? Not a lot really, and we don't have time to work out what's good and what's bad. We can't even believe our own press, when tabloids simply peddle lies as headlines, and they can get away with it. The Daily Mail can use language reminiscent of 1930s Germany to call judges 'enemies of the people', and get away without being called to account for it.

Of course, checking this stuff is hard, and people don't like or want that. In the past you could - at least to a limited extent believe what journalists were telling you (though I appreciate that I'm on very thin ice with that comment), or at least, because you didn't have news being thrown at you every second of the day, you could sit and digest what you had read, and discuss it with other people. We don't do that any longer - we see something that we like and there's a kneejerk reaction to share it without a seconds thought. It then takes on a life of its own, and because your friend shared it to you, and you trust your friend, of course you're going to read, accept and pass it on. How often do we discuss the news these days? I suspect a lot less than we used to. Indeed - what IS the news any longer? We choose for ourselves what is news, and ignore the rest. Moreover, we want to be the ones to get that news out there - we want to be able to provide our friends with the scoop. This puts the traditional news media under intense pressure - are they going to go with a story without checking it, just to be at the forefront of the next wave, or are they going to check it, with the risk that they're going to be seen as too late with the story?

There's also an increasing mistrust of 'experts', whatever 'experts' means. Apparently Britain has had enough of experts, Michael Gove was happy to tell us in the run up to Brexit. The anti vaccination campaign - without any shred of evidence is still capable of getting people to believe in the dangers, rather than the experts who can prove without doubt that these things are safe. Religious movements use their books to tell us that the world was created 6,000 years ago, dinosaurs didn't exist, academics are lying and so on. It's not in the interest of a government to have a well educated, skeptical population - and I admit that I'm prone to the occasional conspiracy theory here - but resources such as libraries close in ever increasing numbers, and the people have to rely on Google, which will quite happily delete links to resources that the governments don't want you to see. As the amount of information doubles and doubles again, it becomes that much harder to find good, honest and accurate information. 

Take another example - there's an article on a website at the moment, which I'm not going to link to, but which you can find by searching for brightside dot me and '10 ways to search Google'. This has been shared on Facebook and Twitter, and currently has over 200 comments. The problem with the article is that most of the ways listed do not work, are out of date or misunderstood. Yet people are saying how useful and helpful this is, and how they are going to share the article with their students and colleagues - this includes people who work at universities. I made the point that the article was inaccurate and was met with scorn and sarcasm - 'they're just trying to help' I was told. Of course, they were doing no such thing - the more hits, the more visits, the more clicks, the more money these people make. Why bother to fact check, or to create a useful article when it was quicker to make stuff up or simply copy work that someone else had done. Experts are not to be trusted. Donald Trump can lie 40 times a day, and people don't care. They don't care because they are so used to being lied to it doesn't mean anything any longer. They're happy to believe whatever is thrown at them. There are plenty of quotes to back this up, and worryingly they do come from sources such as Hitler and Goebells. “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."  I suspect that if he had been around today he would have amended the quote to read 'if you tell a lie big enough and share and retweet it enough, people will eventually come to believe it, and share it onwards themselves'.

So yes, I think an information dark age is an apt description for where we are at the moment. People want to believe things to reinforce their world view, and if they feel powerless they want to do whatever they can, and that includes taking content and rebadging it and sharing it on social media. It's surely our role - and I believe an increasingly important one - to challenge misinformation, to teach people how to check the material that they find, to remain ever vigilant and not to fall into the same trap ourselves. 

 

Over One Million reads!

1,000,392 reads of my blog to be exact at of 09.00am this morning.

That's just direct reads, not via a reader or anything. I've been running the blog at Typepad for about 10 years now, and if I also add in the figures for the sister Social Media Tools blog, I'm well over 1,500,000 reads in total. I never expected to get such figures, and so it's a case of 'many thanks!' to all of you who read the blog, share it on Twitter and other places, and provide comments that keep me going. 

I first started blogging back in 2003, using Blogger and hosting it on my own site. I can't remember the first entry that I made, but it was something along the lines of 'well since everyone else is already blogging I suppose that I should do as well'. Probably my most popular posting was a few years back was the CILIP - Epic Fail entry which criticised the organisation for being too insular and not taking social media seriously. That led to presentation with Brian Kelly at a CILIP Committee meeting and I think ultimately led me to stand for CILIP President a year or so later. 

Most of my posts are quite short, and I do try and keep them amusing but primarily informative, and if I like something I'll say so, and if I don't like it, I'll say that as well. I've never gone down the route of accepting paid or advertising posts (the most that I'll do to bring in a penny or two are the Google ads down the side) because I want people to know that it's always my own point of view, and that I haven't been 'bought' in some way.  

I really enjoy the comments that I get from readers; they are one of the major ways in which I know that I'm doing something right (or wrong!) and while I don't always respond in kind, I do read them all. 

Anyway, that's enough of me nattering on. I shall go and find something to blog about, but once again, many thanks for having stuck with me on this particular journey - it's a lot of fun!

Phil.

Some new Internet statistics for 2020

If you're as keen on using statistics to blow people's minds when running training courses, then you might find this post to be of some interest to you. I've just pulled out the statistics, but the whole thing is worth a read if you have time.

By 2020:

5.4 billion people around the world will have a phone

5.3 billion people will have electricity

3.5 billion will have running water  

2.8 billion carswill be on the road.

There will be a tenfold growth in mobile data traffic to 366.8 exabytes by 2020. (What is 366.8 exabytes? That's the equivalent of 81 trillion Instagram photos or 7 trillion YouTube clips.)

More than 75 percent of the world's mobile data will be video.

Figures taken from Cisco's annual report on mobile traffic growth.

UK Government Spying law moves forward

You will probably remember the 'Snoopers Charter' that has appeared and disappeared over the last few years. However, it's now coming back with a vengeance. The new powers will allow the police to look at your browsing history. Internet Service Providers will have to hang onto that information for a full year and hand it over to the police if requested. A straightforward concern comes up here - that's a huge amount of data, and ISPs will have to invest in more computing power to do it, and they're going to pass the cost onto the consumer. The draft bill will also make it legal for the police and other ancillary bodies such as the Home Office and tax officers to hack into your computer. They will be able to pretty much look at anything they want to; the limitation of only looking at 'illegal' sites has been removed. Even more worryingly, the police will NOT require a warrant to do this. 

Another point of considerable concern is the desire of the government to look at what you're doing on messaging systems such as What's App and iMessage. This means that end to end encryption will no longer be allowed, since the authorities want to be able to look at what you are saying, who you are saying it to, and when you're saying it. This means that companies would have to include back doors into their encryption software, thus crippling the idea of personal security and privacy. Because if the government can easily hack into your account, it's not going to take long before criminals can do it as well. 

There are a whole host of problems with this approach. Chiefly among them is the fact that this won't work. Terrorists are not going to waste their time using popular apps in the first place; there are plenty of other tools out there which they can use to encrypt their conversations. Anyone with any sense is going to start to use resources such as the Tor browser, which means that everything is encrypted, including where you're going and what you're looking at. In order for this to work companies are going to have to agree to create backdoors in order for their software to be used in the UK. It also then leads to a two tier system where a product has to be created twice, and I honestly can't see that happening. However, let's say that it does. When we get visitors to the UK for business or pleasure, are we going to make their delete their existed, encrypted software for the duration of their visit? Or are we going to ask them to surrender their devices when they arrive? 

You can't have a 'bit' of encryption. You either have it or you don't. And if you don't want people to have it, you need to go to extraordinary lengths. For example, it's perfectly easy to put software onto a memory chip or USB stick, so are the border officials going to look at every single stick, every single computer, every single smartphone? 

This attack isn't just happening in the UK of course - in the United States we're seeing companies such as Apple coming under increasing pressure to provide access to data belonging to individuals. I still have trouble with the idea that otherwise seemingly intelligent people have problem with a simple concept - you either have encryption or you don't.