Tag: data

“It’s Complicated” with Facebook

ssegraves

Like a lot of people, I have considered ending my relationship with Facebook. There are plenty of reasons why…

The Reading Room by Susan Jane Golding
The Reading Room by Susan Jane Golding

Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access to Your Shadow Contact Information

“I think that many users don’t fully understand how ad targeting works today: that advertisers can literally specify exactly which users should see their ads by uploading the users’ email addresses, phone numbers, names+dates of birth, etc,” said Mislove. “In describing this work to colleagues, many computer scientists were surprised by this, and we’re even more surprised to learn that not only Facebook, but also Google, Pinterest, and Twitter all offer related services. Thus, we think there is a significant need to educate users about how exactly targeted advertising on such platforms works today.”

#deletefacebook

“Facebook is using us. It is actively giving away our information. It is creating an echo chamber in the name of connection. It surfaces the divisive and destroys the real reason we began using social media in the first place – human connection. — It is a cancer.”

The Facebook hack affecting 50 million people also let the attackers access users’ Tinder, Spotify, and Instagram accounts

“So what happened? In short, the attackers found a way to trick Facebook into issuing them “access tokens” — basically, digital keys — that let them access other users’ accounts as if they were that user. After spotting some unusual activity earlier this month, Facebook realized what was going on on Tuesday evening and subsequently revoked these access tokens before disclosing the hack publicly on Friday — though not before 50 million people were affected.”

The problem is that giving up Facebook is more complicated than simply deleting it and moving on. I know a lot of people say “your real friends have your number, they’ll call or text you” but I have a number of friends who are spread across the globe. Sure a call or a text would be great but with time zones and internet connections, the easiest way to stay in touch is with Facebook or WhatsApp or Instagram. Facebook and Instagram give this passive way of communicating and keeping up while WhatsApp is an easy way to have a chat without having to worry about what time it is where my friends are.

Deep down I don’t really care about browsing Facebook for general updates, but for friends that I do like to stay in touch with, it has becoming an easy place to post photos or life updates. Because of that I keep using it. The problem is that Facebook is “easy”. I know, I know, there are alternatives like Telegram, which I do use, or Yammer for groups. But these require another website/login. Facebook is easy for family and friends to upload things, write posts, etc. without having to worry about another service or login and since tons of people already use it, they are instantly connected.

Again, I know what you’re going to say, “the only way to get people to start using other tools is to leave yourself”. You are probably right and I have come very close to just leaving Facebook and relying on this site and Flickr to stay in touch with people. Each time I get close to leaving I see a post from a friend about something awesome in their life or some sad news and I get dragged back in. Maybe it is one of those things where I just cut the Facebook cord and move on. The repercussions get felt later on and maybe they just aren’t that bad.

What would you do? Have you left Facebook/Instagram/Whatsapp yet? If so, how has it gone?

Why UPS Trucks Don’t Make Left Turns

ssegraves

I am a sucker for this kind of, in Jeopardy terms, potpourri. Priceonomics has a short piece on why UPS trucks do not make left turns. The most telling part:

UPS engineers found that left-hand turns were a major drag on efficiency. Turning against traffic resulted in long waits in left-hand turn lanes that wasted time and fuel, and it also led to a disproportionate number of accidents.

UPS even has a page describing the practice of no left turns and they expand on the above idea.

What we found: A significant cause of idling time resulted from drivers making left turns, essentially going against the flow of traffic. From there we explored routes where these turns were cut out entirely, and then compared data.

The use of data to make a decision that goes against logic is what I love. UPS leadership was experimental enough to say “we are going to implement this and see if it works” and then study the results from that test. There are a number of very large companies that I have worked with that would immediately balk at this idea. They almost go through stages of grief (sans depression) with ideas like this.

  1. Denial – the companies claim the data is wrong or that it is flawed
  2. Anger – the workers who are responsible for causing the data become upset that someone found out about their poor work habits
  3. Bargaining – to get out of making a change, people start tossing out different ideas, none of them good
  4. Acceptance – “I guess we’ll just have to do it”

Then there are the companies who do the complete opposite. They implement a terrible idea based on bad data, or their understanding and interpretation of good data, and it blows up in their face. Once that happens, they become very adverse to ever trying a new idea again. We need new ideas backed by data and I think it’s awesome that UPS took their data and made some interesting choices that have paid off.

Purge

ssegraves

I am thinking of having a summer cleaning fest. Not necessarily one of physical items, though I’m sure I could find plenty of knickknacks to throw out. No, I am talking about a purge and clean up of my digital stuff. There is tons of it. Photos, music, movies, documents, code, and a whole bunch of other stuff sits on my desktop and on my different hard drives. The behavior of letting my digital household go uncleaned has slipped into my browsing habits and my smartphone usage. I keep way too many tabs open in Chrome and the number of apps on my iPhone has become ridiculous.

Starting today, I’m purging all of the extraneous stuff that I don’t need. I will be looking at my different applications on my computers and the different apps on my phone and flat out deleting those things which I do not use on a regular basis. I know there are a few apps that I have not used in months and they need to go. The same applies to bookmarks in my browser and files/folders on my hard drive.

I do not think it is just me that struggles with this. I have written things before about how we are being inundated with information and it is hard to filter out what is important. I have yet to succeed at becoming really good at filtering things like Twitter and Facebook but my move to clean up my devices is an attempt to filter where I go for information. It is the start of really focusing on what’s important and ignoring what isn’t. We’ll see how well I can do, I am known for holding on to things (trinkets, papers, etc.) and deleting things in the digital realm is just as hard for me.