Digital Dilemma, Facebook, Google, Social Media, Twitter

Social Media and Political Ads

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Recently Twitter and Google decided to ban political advertisements on their services. Facebook, however, decided to let users post them. Considering how influential social media can be, the two extreme policy decisions are interesting to consider.

On the one hand, social media is great at targeting users based on preferences and profiles. This makes it easy for users posting political ads, whether real information or disinformation, to reach their intended audience.

On the other side, social media companies are privately owned and they can make policies about what types of things are permissible to post. However, given the number of controversies in recent years about the strong influence of social media on spreading disinformation/misinformation and causing things like riots, discrimination, and potentially having an impact on the US 2016 presidential election results, it does make these types of policy decisions tricky.

It raises the question of how much control social media companies should have over the kind of content posted through their services. Is it their responsibility to be policing language and controlling what people can and can’t post? And really, how much control could a social media company have when the service is used globally by millions or billions of people. Even a small percentage of users posting inappropriate or forbidden content forbidden would still amount to a large volume to manage.

Even with the restrictions in place to ban all political ads for Google and Twitter, it could still be hard to enforce with global users and a wide range of languages being used. Equally challenging is for Facebook to determine how they are going to maintain oversight on political ads. Will they allow any type of ad to be posted, even if it contains misinformation/disinformation? This could be especially challenging now that video can be manipulated and constructed through the use of AI to create misleading and fabricated content.

So which policy is the right one for a social media company to enforce: to ban or allow all political advertisements? Is there a way to find a compromise in the middle? For the moment, Facebook seems to be allowing all ads to be run, even ones that candidates requested to be removed because they contained inaccurate information or had been manipulated. With the US primaries approaching, it will be interesting to observe the impact of social media on the elections.

Digital Dilemma, Google

Disabling Google Map Review Requests

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Every once in a while, Google will repeatedly send me a prompt to rate or answer a question about a place I’ve visited, or looked up on Google maps. The weird thing about this, is it only happens once in a while. The last time it happened, it was for a business I never even visited, or contacted. And Google maps kept sending me reminders to answer questions about this particular place.

My radar went up because as a general rule, I keep my location and web activity disabled (read more about that here and here). I felt curious to know more about how Google was tracking this particular detail and why I kept receiving reminders to rate this place.

I did a few quick internet searches, but couldn’t discover much about why Google was only asking about this one particular place. What I did learn was how to disable yet another hidden setting in Google maps, the one that controls when I was receiving a prompt to rate a place or answer a question about it.

Turns out the settings in Google maps are full of options and features, most of which are turned on by default. This is definitely a good thing to investigate to learn more about what you may be unknowingly sharing with Google.

What really bugs me about this stuff is that so much of it happens without me knowing. I might be okay with these kinds of things if more was disclosed in a way that was easy to understand rather than reading a 50-page End User License Agreement.

Too often we blindly sacrifice our privacy and rights for convenience. The real problem is that I never know what else is going to be done with my information. Filling out a rating or answering a question about a place you’ve visited may seem harmless, but one never knows what else is going to be done with that data.

To disable the rating/question prompt, open up Google maps. Go to the hamburger menu and select settings.

Then go to Notifications.

Once in Notifications, I selected two different areas to disable the reminders and tracking. The first place was “Your reviews.” Observe how everything was turned on by default when I first visited this area in settings.

Then I went into “Q&A and Messages” to disable all the prompts.

Digital Dilemma

Filling Out Forms

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It always amazes me how antiquated the process of filling out forms remains, even with so much technology available to make this task easier and more accurate. I still receive paper forms to fill out in the mail! Or even worse, I receive forms as email attachments that I have to print out to fill in, scan, and then email back as another attachment. Or sometimes I’m able to fill out forms electronically, but the formatting is weird and the information won’t line up or fit properly.

Here’s why this is problematic from a time, resource, and data management perspective. Forms filled out by hand require the applicant to spend time entering all the information. Then the recipient has to spend time deciphering the handwriting to re-enter the information into some kind of electronic system. This requires effort from at least two people.

One of the biggest problems with this type of system is the high potential for data entry errors. An “I” can turn into a “1”, last names can be misspelled, numbers transposed, decimal points missed, etc. These may seem like small typographical mistakes, but they can have a big impact sometimes. Imagine somebody getting a dose of medication where the decimal point is off by one place. Or important communications not reaching somebody because an email address is misspelled, or an address entered incorrectly.

Alternatively, some forms can be filled out online, or electronically. Although these can be easier to fill out if they’ve been formatted properly, they are often not integrated with a system on the backend to manage all the information. Essentially, the data remains static on the form where it has to be attached to the applicant’s file. The information on them can be difficult to update or search, meaning they are not always reliable.

So what’s ideal? The best system is to have the form linked directly to the data management system managing the information on the backend. This way the information gets entered one time, directly into the system. It saves time because only one entry is required and more importantly, it reduces silly errors that can cause a lot of problems later.

Productivity

Formatting: Hidden Time Saver

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Some years ago while working on a contract, I was given a 60-page template to write the final report for the client. The problem with the template was that the formatting in it was not done properly. Consequently, every time I updated a section and the page numbers changed, I had to spend time fixing everything manually.

Some of the things that required manual manipulations were heading/sub-heading fonts and numbering styles, page numbers that wouldn’t update, and the table of contents. By the end of the project, I had gone over my allotted time by 20 hours (approximately 3 days of work) because of how many times I had to manually fix these things in the report, which incidentally was over 100 pages by the time I finished writing it. I tracked my hours and tasks carefully during the project, so I know the extra time was spent unnecessarily fixing the report formatting.

After that experience, I decided that becoming expert with formatting documents would be a good use of my time. Everybody has competing priorities so it pays to be strategic when making a time investment to learn something new. However, I felt confident that time spent to master formatting was a solid investment. Sometimes computers do things better than humans and formatting is one of those things.

Here are some basics to get started.

Use the defined Header/sub-header styles. Defined styles make it easier to create/update a table of contents. It’s also easier to make global changes (i.e., modify the font, color, size, etc. of a header style in a document) by adjusting the style in one centralized place. When applied, it will automatically update everything with that style in the document.

Master the difference between page breaks and section breaks. A page break will push content to a new page. No need to hit the Enter button repeatedly to move text manually. Insert a page break and the text will stay firmly on a new page, even if you add, or delete something later.

A section break is for changing the formatting. For example, having text appear as columns instead of paragraphs. Or using different page numbering styles for different sections of the document.

Lastly, I made friends with the “reveal formatting” option. I used to be scared of it, but now I find it quite valuable for understanding and fixing poorly done formatting.

Deletion, Digital Dilemma, Productivity

Saving Too Much

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Saving everything (aka too much), goes against a default humans have contended with forever.  Humans could never save everything for a host of reasons, such as time to process everything and the space to store it all.

This mainly applies to physical stuff because eventually we run out of storage and it’s obvious when that happens. Of course some people will move to a bigger place to accommodate their things, or start renting external storage units.

The seemingly infinite amount of digital storage space and new technologies that help us process all of our digital belongings have influenced a lot of our habits and behaviors. Now, it’s possible to save more than we ever thought possible. And in some scenarios, it’s easier and initially less time consuming to save everything that it is to sort, label, and manage it properly. This doesn’t even take into consideration how many things are saved on our behalf, or about us, by third-party apps and services we use. This is mostly because we’re either not aware of how much is being gathered and/or we don’t care about because we never see or use what’s been collected.

Saving everything is tempting, but here are some of the dangers:

  • Losing track of what you have (if you get hacked, how would you know what was compromised?)
  • Difficulty finding what you need (searches yield hundreds/thousands of results requiring time to review)
  • Migrating content to latest format to ensure that it can be accessed with updated softwares/hardwares (the less you have, the less you need to transfer)
  • Exposing too much about your past self, when you’ve moved on to new things in your life (goes with losing track of what you have)

So what do we do to combat the urge to accumulate so much digital stuff? Of course, this is only if you feel bothered by the Digital Detritus lingering around in forgotten, neglected caches of stuff.

Some strategies are:

  • Be mindful about what you are creating and saving
  • Restrict storage limits – rather than paying for more, try to utilize the space you have
  • Save strategically
  • Go through your digital holdings periodically and purge – since there are so many things to review, I find it useful to start small with a single folder or my bookmarks bar

Cleaning up digital storage can feel tedious, until disaster strikes. Then you’ll feel better because you’ll know what you have.

Google, True Confessions

Audio Navigation

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Typically when I use a map app to get around, I prefer to type in the addresses, rather than relying on the location feature to pinpoint where I am. (Read more about why I do that here and here.) Since the location feature is disabled, this also means I need to rely on reading the map to get around instead of taking advantage of the audio feature.

However, there are a few distinct scenarios when having the location feature engaged and the instructions dictated are a life saver.

Scenario #1: When I’m navigating for my partner. I can’t even count how many times having Google maps read out the instructions has prevented an argument or dispute about which way to go. When Google maps is wrong, it’s easy to blame the app, which diffuses a lot of tension, especially when driving in an unfamiliar place.

Scenario #2: When I’m driving by myself. Even though I look at the map and directions before I go somewhere, it’s very useful to have the directions dictated to me when I’m driving solo. This means I can focus completely on the road and has prevented me from getting lost a number of times.

Scenario #3: Useful feature for people who can’t read maps. Admittedly, people who can’t read maps, or figure out how to use the map apps, are a big peeve of mine. I get frustrated when people with smartphones, especially taxi drivers, can’t figure out how to get around with the map apps. I blogged about this before in a post titled “When Smartphones Make Us Dumb.”

For these non-map reading people, the audio directions are a wonderful thing. Google maps will tell someone exactly where to go. All the person has to do is turn on location, pay attention to street signs and glance at the moving blue dot on the map to make sure s/he is going in the right direction.

On the flip side, sometimes Google maps gives too many instructions which can be distracting. For example, when driving on a highway that sometimes intersects with other routes. Google maps will repeat several times to stay in one lane or the other to continue on the same path.

The other annoying thing is when the radio is playing and Google maps interrupts with a direction. Sadly, the radio will not automatically pause so both things play at the same time.