The 463: Inside Tech

This Isn’t Your Grandma’s Farmville: The Alien World of Content Farming

(Kelsey Kirchmann) Everyone has seen the malformed beasts produced by content farming. Those weird, slinking articles titled “How to Fix a Lawnmower” or “Top Ten Summer Camp Themed Movies” that have little or no valuable content, but will take an unsuspecting netizen to a page filled with pop-up and sidebar ads if he chooses to “read more…” Some people spend hours stuck in the vortex of content farming and come away from the Internet no wiser or at least without an answer to their original query. Welcome to the weird world of content farming.

Most of us have been exposed to content farming when we are performing a routine query on a search engine. We search things like “How to Make Smores” or “LSAT HELP”, and we receive ranked search results by our preferred search engine. Some of the links in the search engine results are helpful and from reputable sources. Others would make our sixth grade English teachers cringe with republished content or a hodgepodge of words and pictures that are merely designed to suck the uniformed netizen into a rabbit hole of farmed content.

Content farms are often dressed up as legitimate websites or come from reputable sourced with broad name recognition. Some content farmers include Associated Content, e-How, wikihow, Cracked, Demand Media, CNN, AOL Seed and Patch, and Yahoo! Answers. These content farmers hire content farm workers for the hard labor.

Content farm workers are actual people who once dreamed of writing the great American novel or winning the Pulitzer for an article on populist revolutions in the Middle East, but are forced by circumstance (the economy, the decline of print media, really bad dates) to produce low quality content for even lower quality salary.

Content farms use computer algorithms which track trending search terms to produce a list of topics that will generate the most page views. Content farmers then work on impossible thirty-minute deadlines to produce bologna content on these computer-generated topics.

The quality of farmed content is not important; the content is merely a backsplash for the ads on the page. The central purpose of content farming is to garner ad revenue through page views. Read this horror story from a former content farmer for AOL and you will understand that the above summary of content farming is far from melodrama.

As a casual netizen, I first truly began to understand the alien concept of content farming a few days ago after reading an opinion piece in the New York Times. This blog post by Virginia Heffernan documented Google’s war on content farming with a new algorithm named Panda. Panda works to send farmed content to the bottom of Google’s page ranking system, making farmed content less valuable to content farms. Being at the bottom of the page ranking system does not equate to a high number of page views or ad revenue.

Google has just released Panda 2.2, the revised second edition of the Panda algorithm created to fight farmed content. Since Panda’s February 2011 launch, Google has been refining this algorithm and quietly releasing updated versions. According to this legal brief, Google Panda has been increasingly effective at weeding out worthless farmed content with eHow and Wikihow being the hardest hit of the content farms.

But Google Panda does not mean cybercitizens and their computers can sleep soundly. There is a new frontier, wild and lawless, that content farmers are beginning to exploit: e-books. A recent article in Salon titled “Spamazon” talks about the farmed content that is beginning to infiltrate the Amazon marketplace for Kindle books. Content farmers buy the rights to popular books or book titles then rearrange the words or completely change the content. Content farmers sell their product for a fraction of the cost of a legitimate e-book. Cybercitizens are then tricked into buying a low-cost, garbage imitation of Alice in Wonderland or The Yogurt Diet for Dummies. It is becoming increasingly difficult to sort the cheap imitators from legitimate e-literature. So Panda may be protecting your Google searches, but Panda cannot protect your Kindle.

I’m not sure if cheap imitations or get rich quick schemes are human nature or a law of the universe, but for now content farming will continue until the entire global community of cybercitizens fully understands the way content is generated and presented on the internet. We should all arm ourselves with knowledge and be our own Pandas. As long as we can recognize farmed content and steer ourselves back to the more reputable sources of online information, we can be responsible and empowered netizens. 

Privacy Done Well

David Mack -- Online privacy could well be the buzzwords of 2010.  With ongoing FTC roundtables, impending legislation and a flurry of questions about what all this openness is doing to our society we’re guaranteed to see changes in the way we share online information this year.

But who is best equipped to provide meaningful solutions?  Can industry do it alone (and fast enough) or will the government deliver a one size fits all answer? 

Kim Hart posted a story in today’s Hillicon Valley that explores the European Commissions’ call for social networks to add privacy protections for teens.  U.S. based companies are undoubtedly watching the EC’s comments closely to see if they are followed up with teeth.   Juliana Gruenwald reported additional details on the Tech Daily Dose blog. 

Not surprisingly, the call to action is being framed as a way to protect children online.

For now, the EC is working proactively with major social networking sites to establish a series of best practices that will enable communities to grow safely.  This partnership is a good example of government and industry growing together, but it is not always the case.

In the final days of the 2009 session, under the guise of protecting children, the Maine legislature passed a bill that would have made it illegal for minors to share personal information with a company without first providing verifiable parental consent. 

While the law was created with the best of intentions, a broad variety of organizations, including NetChoice, the Maine Press Association and the Maine Independent Colleges Association immediately recognized the unintended harm such a broad law would have on free speech and services we take for granted – including notification of volunteer opportunities or college prep services.

The U.S. District Court of Maine ultimately found the law to be an unacceptable violation of first amendment rights, but the episode was a good reminder of what can go wrong when industry and policy makers fail to collaborate.  

The year ahead will present many opportunities for collaboration.  We’ll all benefit from a focus on industry and policy maker partnership and vigilance against knee jerk legislative solutions. 

Score One for the Good Guys

“I love it when a plan comes together” – Colonel John “Hannibal” Smith

The classic line by the Colonel was at the top of our minds when we saw the Maine Joint Judiciary Committee vote unanimously to repeal the Maine Predatory Marketing Act last week. 

The law was the number one offender on NetChoice’s iAwful list and widely seen as a threat to free speech and online information.  The iAwful list ranks the top state and federal laws that are a threat to online speech and Internet commerce.

While the Act had the best of intentions (helping to keep minors safe online) it was written in such a way that both the state’s Attorney General and the U.S. District Court of Maine publically warned of its first amendment crushing potential.

Steve DelBianco of NetChoice travelled to Maine to testify before an emergency hearing called by House and Senate leadership following the District Court’s warning on the law’s constitutionality.  In his testimony, DelBianco provided legislators with concrete, real world examples of how the act would unleash a torrent of litigation and block teen’s access to important online health and educational information.

The committee’s decision to repeal the act is a great example of citizen advocacy in action.  Congratulations to our partners at NetChoice and the people of Maine for proactively defending their rights.  

Now, on to our next iAwful targets!

By:  David Mack

Mr. Chopra Goes to Silicon Valley

Katie Hallen -- Aneesh Chopra received a rock star’s welcome Tuesday night at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif., in an event hosted by TechNet, the Center for Democracy and Technology and the Churchill Club.  For America’s first federal CTO, it was his first visit – and public appearance – in Silicon Valley since President Obama appointed him to office in April.

Chopra, who previously was Virginia’s secretary of technology, had initially been perceived by some in the room as a Silicon Valley outsider, but last night they embraced him as a visionary with big ideas and specific objectives to help the government translate technology to boost U.S. global competitiveness and better engage the citizenry.

Among those in the packed room of 350 attendees was Tim O’Reilly, an early Chopra supporter.  O’Reilly wrote back in April when news of the CTO appointment hit that: “Chopra has been one of those who have taught me the most about how we can build a better government with the help of technology.” 

Chopra revealed his near-term (next 90 days, by September 22) versus long-term priorities, looking at how government can invest in the building blocks of innovation, promote innovation to achieve national policy goals, and instill a culture of openness and transparency.  In particular, he cited his huge support for health care IT, education technology and government R&D investment.

 “We need to embrace this spirit of commonwealth – the idea that we can bring the power of entrepreneurship to deliver game-changing innovation in our public services,” said Chopra who peppered his remarks with stories of social entrepreneurs who have inspired him to help technology and the government work better for the American people.

Watch the YouTube video from the talk and Q&A on the Churchill Club’s YouTube Channel.

Read the Twitter chatter here.

See more coverage from TechCrunch, PC Magazine and the New York Times.

TechNet and the Center for Democracy and Technology are 463 clients.





 














 

IGF: Rio Wrap

David McGuire in Rio -- Well that was entertaining. I'm sitting in the lobby of the Windsor Barra hotel in Rio de Janeiro, and all around me (iPhone photo from my balcony above), the detritus of the Second Annual Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is being disassembled and packed away. (Ed note: Detritus? WTF, who is this McGuire guy?)

Hard to draw any real conclusions out of the event and that's probably a good thing. In one of the final sessions of the day, Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the Internet, remarked on what made the IGF a good thing.

"It's a non-negotiating climate. Sometimes people disagree, and that's ok."

I certainly can't put it any better than that. In the end, those who had concerns about the current state of Internet governance were heard, as were those opposed to wholesale changes. Companies, advocates and governments were able to collaborate and share best practices, and no chairs were
thrown. Mission accomplished.

If there was any worrisome note in the whole thing, it came toward the end, when one of the Russian delegates announced his intention to ask the UN to create a special working group charged with transitioning control of ICANN to a multinational bureaucracy.

That would obviously be a nightmare scenario, but he's got a tough row to hoe, and it seems unlikely the UN would want to reopen this can of worms so soon after the conclusion of the controversial two-year process that created the IGF.

For the most part, the IGF stayed true to its original purpose. As long as it keeps to that path, it will be remain a unique and worthwhile component of the global Internet governance discussion.

More News from Rio

Greetings from lovely Rio de Janeiro!

At least I assume it's lovely. No matter where you go in the world, all hotel conference facilities look alike. I could be sitting in Arlington for all I know (I realize your hearts bleed for me).

I'm down here with 463's Jim Hock and 2,000 of our closest friends for the second annual Internet Governance Forum where the issue du jour -- if the media reports are to be believed -- is "U.S. control of the Internet." Never mind that the UN bickered about this very topic for two years when they were supposed to be discussing ways to increase technology resources in developing nations (an important topic that still hasn't received enough attention) we apparently need to bicker about it some more.

Now if the IGF stays true to its original vision -- an open forum where government, industry and public interest voices from around the word can speak and be heard on issues critical to Internet development -- there's absolutely nothing wrong with these discussions (though they do get a trifle repetitive). The problem is that some governments are simply not content with the Internet Governance Forum being a "forum." They want it to be a decision-making body and are engaged in all sorts of behind the scenes shenanigans aimed at pushing the IGF in that direction.

The flashpoint is likely to be Thursday, during the "Taking Stock and Way Forward" session meant to wrap up the themes of the conference. That's where we're most likely to see advocates of greater government control push for some sort of negotiated document meant to spin some sort of "findings" or "conclusions" from this whirlpool of opinions. That would be bad news from Brazil.

More to come...

-David McGuire

Rio IGF: Call for New Internet Regulatory Body

Jim Hock, Rio de Janeiro -- I am in Rio for the second Internet Governance Forum (lucky me, although it’s raining cats and dogs in the land of the Bossa Nova) and am disappointed to report that the Italian representative speaking at the opening session called for a new regulatory body to oversee the Internet.  Did I miss something?  Is the Internet broken and need to be overhauled under a bureaucratic regime? 

Seems to me that this debate is yesterday’s news.  Instead, we should be talking about how to best work within the current institutions such as ICANN and others to help connect the rest of developing world to the Internet. 

One random thought:   I am listening to a panel presentation on open standards featuring Thomas Vinje, a lawyer who founded ECIS.  The irony of ironies is that when Vinje started talking after three others, his microphone cut off with the very earnest IGF tech folks trying to fix the problem.  At that very moment these capable folks were trying to fix the problem, a very quick flash of the Microsoft logo appeared on the screen.  Too funny.  When talking about the EU competition ruling in September, Vinje had this money quote:  “Governments can do things to ensure that standards survive and thrive, even in a sector dominated by a single company.”

Andrew Noyes from Tech Daily is also providing IGF updates.  Web casts of sessions here.

Sex, Domains and Governance

       

The ICANN board once again quashed an application for a new .xxx top level domain.  It would have been used adult content sites who chose to zone themselves in that Web neighborhood.

The board voted to reject the application 9-5 and the there was a good amount of contention among the members on the decision.  And, if you have followed the history of ICANN, even knowing this is a pretty remarkable thing.  The organization has been long dogged by Internet activists for being secretive, unaccountable and opaque in its decision making process.  By contrast, the transcript of the .xxx debate was almost immediately posted to the new ICANN blog.  On top of that, one of the board members, Susan Crawford, posted her own objections to the decision on her blog.  Another board member in the minority echoed her perspective on his blog.

Yet, obviously, it's the decision here that is really important and not how it was disclosed.  And, in reading the transcript, it's a pretty interesting exploration in the current state of Internet governance, how governments interact with ICANN (or not) and the impending pressures related to content and "community" norms that are hitting the Internet as it becomes more mainstream in diverse cultures around the world.

Much of the debate had to do with whether or not the board was unduly influenced by governments to make this decision.  Clearly, a February 28 letter (pdf) from Australia's Minister of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Helen Coonan, was a big sticking point for some.  In the letter, Coonan, who has called mobile phones "pipelines for perversion" wrote:

TPS: VeriSign's CEO Stratton Sclavos

Today's feature CEO interview at the Tech Policy Summit was between VeriSign chief Stratton Sclavos and CNBC's Jim Goldman. Paraphrased and condensed notes after the leap....

PFF's Tech Policy Agenda

   
The Progress & Freedom Foundation announced its 10-point tech policy plan for the 110th Congress on Friday.  The 10...

1 - Renew fundamental reforms of communications regulations.
2 - Leave network neutrality concerns to the market and antitrust.
3 - Leave content business models and fair use to the market.
4 - When addressing patents, take a first-principles approach to property and innovation.
5 - Enact meaningful reform of archaic media ownerships laws and regulations that hinder media marketplace experimentation.
6- Pursue greater First Amendment parity among modern media providers by leveling the playing field in the direction of greater freedom for all operators / platforms.
7 - Subject data security and privacy proposals to careful benefit-cost analysis, including full examination of consumer benefits from services and technologies affected by these proposals.
8 - Promote pro-competitive, non-regulatory internet governance.
9 - Avoid open-ended, intrusive data retention mandates.
10 - Promote more efficient taxation of telecom services and Internet sales.

The full study with further descriptions of the positions can be downloaded here.  After the jump are two of the full recommendations....