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Perspectives

What the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation means for website compliance

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Today’s websites and apps are powered by sophisticated technology. After all, to meet consumer expectations—for search, content consumption, social networking, shopping, travel booking, news, banking, gaming, and so much more—websites (from ecommerce and entertainment to corporate) must incorporate robust solutions on the backend.

The workings of these sorts of solutions aren’t news to Revenue and Ad Operations professionals. But for everyone else: They are where security problems start.

Think about it. Companies generally outsource 80% of a typical website’s functionality to vendors providing specialized services like data management platforms, image or video hosting, marketing analytics, content delivery, customer identification, payment processing, and more. This third-party code operates outside the purview of your IT and security infrastructure, which means that you control less than 25% of the code executing on your website.

As the website operator, you have no insight into when this code is compromised to act as a conduit for malware propagation and unauthorized audience data collection. Considering the current regulatory environment around data compliance, the above statistics should make you nervous.

The Cookie Crumbles

To put it bluntly: You can’t control what you don’t see. Your digital properties have more third-party code than you realize. And this code is compromised more often than you think.

As the digital risk management provider for many of the world’s largest digital properties, The Media Trust scans websites for security and policy violations and actively manages more than 600 incidents at any one time. We’ve found that some of the simplest websites average 10 third-party vendors. But most have dozens. These vendors continuously change and so do their actions.

The Media Trust team often detects unauthorized or persistent cookies with a lifespan of 30 years or more. One brand-name ecommerce website recently dropped a 7,000+ year cookie. This raises a huge issue with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which goes into effect in May 2018. GDPR is the first EU-wide regulation addressing personal data protection rights of residents. In essence, GDPR harmonizes and strengthens the individual national laws to give consumers enhanced rights over the information that is collected, used, and stored about them. It also codifies a penalty structure for violations (up to 4% of annual revenue/turnover). As a result, companies will need to dramatically change their approach to managing consumer data including online behavior.

Compliance to GDPR requires detailed, real-time, knowledge of executing digital partners and their activity. This includes the type of data collected and how long the partner remains on the user’s device, i.e., browser, phone, tablet, etc.

If you are wondering how GDPR affects media publishers and their ad tech partners, then you’ve got a lot of catching up to do. GDPR supports the data protection rights of every EU residents. Therefore, every business with EU interests—in the form of customers, legal entities, business infrastructure, etc.—needs to comply. And the global nature of the internet means any business with EU website traffic or app users need to comply as well.

Evaluate—and Modify—Operations

Clearly, to reduce exposure to GDPR violations enterprises should make some changes to digital operations. At a minimum, execute the following for all your digital properties—websites (desktop & mobile) and mobile apps:

  1. Communicate your privacy policy
  • Write a clear privacy policy explaining use of third-party code and data collection activity.
  • Post policy banner on homepage.
  • Deliver internal training.
  1. Provide easy-to-use opt in/ opt out mechanism
  • Explain the need for tracking and how cookies drive digital operations.
  • Share links to individual privacy policies of all in-scope vendors on your site.
  • Allow individuals to explicitly agree and/or refuse tracking.
  1. Understand how website/ app-generated data is acquired, used & stored
  • Identify data: Registration, Cookies, IP address, and device ID.
  • Assess the legal basis to collect data and determine if consent is necessary, e.g., Personally Identifiable Information (PII) vs. transaction functionality, etc.
  • Evaluate the need for a specific policy regarding data of minor activity (16 years old in GDPR; under 13 years old in U.K. and U.S.)
  1. Support data portability
  1. Incorporate website intrusion to data breach reporting process
  • While the GDPR mandate for websites has been clearly laid out, meeting it is easier said than done. With fines for noncompliance enumerated in the regulation (between 4% of global revenues or €20 Million), Revenue and Ad Operations are under pressure from internal risk and compliance professionals to ensure all data elements are documented, assessed, and controlled.
Ignorance is real. So is anarchy.

With such a tall order, it is disturbing that so many overlook the perils of third-party vendor code going unchecked. Publishers desperately need to incorporate digital vendors into their vendor risk management program. Most website/app operators are in the dark about how many direct and indirect vendors contribute to code on their site and who these vendors are, let alone know how many domains and cookies these vendors use to track website visitors.

Digital vendor risk management will highlight the security and compliance gaps inherent in the digital environment. For example, there really isn’t a clear chain of command when it comes to authorizing the presence of third-party vendors executing on a website. The process is fairly decentralized. Departments like marketing, sales/revenue operations, IT, risk and legal all make decisions regarding the vendors they would like to use for various website functionalities. This makes creating accountability challenging, with most issues relegated to the IT and security departments to solve.

Put the “Digital” in Vendor Risk Management

Yes, the odds are stacked against website operators, but creating a holistic digital vendor risk management program isn’t impossible. To create a risk management and GDPR compliance program for your digital properties, you should be able to answer the following:

Within 2 weeks:
  • How many third-party vendors execute in websites/ mobile apps?
  • What are the names of these vendors?
  • What exactly are they doing, i.e., intended purpose and any out-of-scope activity?
Within 1 month:
  • Do I have contracts to authorize vendor scope?
  • How does third-party vendor activity affect overall website/ app performance?
  • What are the risks to data privacy?
  • What is my exposure to regulatory risk via vendor behavior?
Within 3 months:
  • Am I maintaining encryption throughout the call chain?
  • As these vendors change over time, what is the process to identify new vendors and their activity on websites/ apps?
  • If the corporate website isn’t fully secure, is the enterprise network at risk when employees visit the site?

Answering these questions set the stage for creating a comprehensive digital vendor risk process. This can serve as your GDPR compliance mechanism for your digital assets. This doesn’t just make sense for your customers, it will be an essential part of being part of the global digital economy.

Matt O’Neill has been working on the front line of digital advertising in an industry-facing capacity since 1999. Most recently, he has taken on the role of European General Manager for The Media Trust, a US-based digital security and advertising quality assurance company. Matt  strives to generate industry consensus from senior leaders and drive innovation through collaboration. He is a frequent speaker, panelist, and chair at industry conferences including Digiday, IAB, dmexco, The Guardian, AOP (UK), Admangerforum, and corporate-operated events. He is an active advisor and investor for advertising and marketing technology start-up enterprises and a senior partner at AtlanticLeap.

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Perspectives

DCN’s must reads: week of June 22, 2017

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Here are some of the best media stories our team has read so far this week:
Perspectives | Revenue

Why the duopoly should help publishers drive subscriptions

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A growing number of publishers – non-profit and for-profit – have pushed into subscriptions, memberships and donations. However, it’s been difficult to motivate the big drivers of digital content consumption – namely Facebook and Google – to help push payments for publishers.

There are good reasons for this: The tech giants don’t have an inherent reason to drive subscriptions or put up walls between their unfettered platforms and paid content. But if they truly want to support quality journalism and the good content that delivers so much engagement on their platforms, then it’s important they put time and resources into supporting these publishers.

It is also a matter of principle. If the duopoly in online advertising is going to vacuum up all the online ad growth, then the least they could do is throw publishers a life-line by pushing some people into subscription funnels. And for smaller publishers, the platforms could provide true life support to make sure that news deserts and other underserved areas have thriving news organizations.

Facebook’s Baby Steps

Already, Facebook is developing a way to help people subscribe to news orgs via Instant Articles, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. The feature is being developed for the mobile Facebook app, and Facebook would like to create a metered model where readers get a certain number of articles free before having to pay up.

But the devil is in the details. Facebook might want to take a cut of the purchases if people pay for content on Facebook. And setting up a meter would have to be variable as some sites have more severe paywalls than others. For instance, the Washington Post, and New York Times have more forgiving walls than the Wall Street Journal or Financial Times.

And yet, this is a problem that really must be solved for the small and medium-sized publishers whose life could depend on these subscriptions.

“Helping news publishers get paid for their digital content is arguably the most meaningful help that Facebook could provide to global journalism,” Lenfest Institute CEO Jim Friedlich told the Journal. “If Facebook truly creates a successful platform for the sale of news subscriptions at scale it will be a powerful and historic game changer for the news industry.”

Google’s ‘Funding Choices’ and Roundtable Chat

Google definitely has a head-start on Facebook when it comes to working with publishers of all sizes. Its Google News Lab has been providing training and tools for newsrooms for a few years. But its early efforts in driving payments to publishers have been underwhelming so far.

In 2015, Google launched Contributor to give publishers a way to offer options to visitors. They could either disable your ad-blocker or pay a per-page fee for your visit without ads. But that effort was scuttled for a new version of Contributor this month that includes “Funding Choices,” a similar message crafted by publishers to give people the same choice as before: Pay up or turn off that ad-blocker. Users can buy a $5 pass and then pay as they visit these sites.

But Google can do more. At a recent Platforms + Publishers private roundtable that I produced at Google’s office in Chicago, one of the most popular breakout groups was around driving subscriptions to smaller publishers – including donations to non-profits. Some ideas  discussed include a potential Chrome extension for donations; and a product called “AMP Revenues” or “AMP Donate” that could drive payments from within Google AMP. And with the data that Google has on potential customers, they could partner to help publishers identify future subscribers.

Why It’s Worth the Challenge

Helping publishers drive subscriptions and donations isn’t an impossible challenge for the tech giants, but it is a challenge. Every publisher has its own kind of paywall, its own membership structure, its own tiers of paid content and services. There’s very little that’s standard, and there are a million different small publishers out there. Not to mention the issues that platforms have just identifying who is trustworthy and not polluting the web with spam and fake news.

However, there are associations that can help the tech companies work with small and local players, including the Local Media Consortium, National Association of Broadcasters, Local Independent Online News Publishers, Institute for Nonprofit News and, of course, Digital Content Next, though it skews bigger.

Sound Reasons Why

Here’s a roundup of reasons why this is worth the effort for platforms:

  • Google wants to organize the world’s information, and if it truly wants quality information from all over the country, all over the world, it will have to help identify and help keep the ecosystem of smaller players healthy. Driving revenues to those players, whether through ads or subscriptions, makes sense for everyone’s bottom line.
  • The platforms have already built relationships with the publishers on so many fronts – around ad-blocking and ad quality, mobile speed, fact-checking – that making a bigger investment in subscriptions will only deepen those relationships and build more trust.
  • Even though there’s a feeling that putting up a paywall will only remove the content from platforms, or send them off the social networks, the reality is that subscription sites still depend on engagement, comments and community (think Facebook Groups) on social media.
  • The tech giants in Silicon Valley already have to contend with enough bad PR, and even global anti-trust concerns, so at the very least this will show that they care about the little guy and gal, the non-profit, the hyper-local, the metro daily.

And speaking of PR, we all know that when Facebook and Google talk about developing new ways to help publishers, we all roll our eyes and wonder if it’s all just for show. On the subject of subscriptions and paid content, this is a chance for the platforms to show that they aren’t all talk and no action. Supporting publishers could make a lasting difference.

Marketing | Perspectives

Direct buys and non-blind programmatic need context to solve brand safety

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The dust has largely settled after March’s brand safety scandal – however the problem hasn’t gone away. Although some brands are reported to have returned to Google advertising by May, others – including Pepsi, Tesco, and Marks & Spencer – were still waiting for solid guarantees from Google over and above what has already been promised.

The changes Google says it has already taken to improve brand safety haven’t been bedded in, aren’t sufficient for some brands, and still lack a vital component – third party verification. Google has promised to deliver such verification in the future, but before it’s implemented, marketers refusing to risk their brand reputation are opting for ad providers who can make promises on where their ads will appear as well as delivering third party verified monitoring and reporting on where ad creative actually did appear.

Third party monitoring, reporting and verification is imperative, of course, but it can really only help brands, publishers and ad tech companies to react to any concerning ad placement. Many brands would prefer a zero tolerance for any ad misplacement rather than an acceptance that misplacement will happen from time to time. Those marketers are likely to be the ones who focus their ad buying and planning on ad campaigns bought directly from ad inventory providers or, at very least, non-blind programmatic ad campaigns.

An incredibly insightful analysis by MediaPost’s Sean Hargrave identified this very issue. He suggested a correlation between the mere one in four media buyers who feel informed of their ad suppliers’ brand safety measures and the 28% who say they know where all their ads are going. He recognized quite reasonably that these buyers most likely focus on direct, non-blind programmatic buys. That means that they receive assurances of the quality of the ads. However, lumping blame on the blind buys alone fails to consider how some of the most sophisticated targeting technologies are the contemporary causes of even more catastrophically compromised ad placement.

Consider the Context

In fact, a Financial Times’ report on the aftermath of the scandal serves as a perfect case study. Their journalists’ research identified ads for Huawei, wix and even the Advertising Week Europe event displayed before a YouTube video from a UK-banned preacher. My strong hunch is that the European technology correspondent was researching those brands online for that article, other articles or other valid reasons, and the ads were behaviourally or re-targeted.

This one instance shows how dangerous it is for ad campaigns to rely on behaviourally and retargeting technology in isolation. They can be great at targeting brands’ biggest and established fans, but if those very consumers are presented with targeted ads for their favorite brands whilst browsing shocking content – which they are more likely to do because they fear it than agreement with it – then the damage is huge. Yes, that consumer might well be the right fit for the brand’s latest product. But that won’t matter if they are connecting within the most brand-damaging environment and state-of-mind. Here, the fundamental failure is one of context. Ad campaigns that do not include analysis and targeting of ad campaigns to the context of the content will always be at far higher risk of damaging their brand.

Need to Know

Being transparent about the publications which display campaigns’ ad creative, and backing that up with brand safety technology as well as independent third-party monitoring are essential qualities of any decent ad supplier. Yet even the most premium, brand safe media titles can carry compromising content. They have to. There are bad things in the world that people have a right to know. That’s why assessment of context – both its safety and relevance to campaigns – must be at a granular level, assessing not just the articles, but the keywords and phrases used within those articles.

Let’s be clear: categorization of content into buckets for advertisers to choose where to advertise is not contextual targeting. Content categorization alone is wildly insufficient, especially when users categorize their own content. Extremists don’t consider themselves “extremists”, so they might categorize revolting content as “current affairs”, “culture”, or “sex and relationships”. True contextual targeting understands the actual words used to identify content as both relevant and brand safe for advertisers.

Get the Signals Straight

Incorporating contextual does not mean abandoning other forms of targeting, such as behaviorally, demographic, or re-targeting, even when purchasing ads programmatically. There’s great ad tech available programmatically that can combine contextual signals with audience data to target campaigns to relevant consumers in brand safe environments. That said, pure reliance on computers to assess both audience and contextual appropriateness for ads will always be more risky than involving humans, even with the introduction of artificial intelligence. Ad buyers and planners know this, as nearly three-quarters of them (74.2%) say it’s more difficult to ensure brand safe environments when buying programmatically on open exchanges.

Hence managing brand safety must involve human beings. Computers just cannot match our abilities to identify the contextual appropriateness and relevance of content for advertisers. People are needed to vet publishers’ operations and content to ensure they meet advertisers’ stated quality standards. They’re needed to monitor and react to the news agenda which may introduce brand damaging content into campaigns. People are needed to operate the targeting and brand safety tech and to make sure things are going right for advertisers, publishers and consumers. Of course some ad providers rely on consumers rather than professionals to perform such functions. Not only is that an abdication of responsibility, but the horse has bolted by that point.

Doug Stevenson is the Co-CEO of contextual advertising platform Vibrant Media, and based in San Francisco. As the co-founder of Vibrant, Doug has co-led the company’s expansion with Craig Gooding from when the company began operations in 2000. Doug was awarded ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’ from Ernst and Young and was a Distinguished Honoree for the International Business Awards, Executive of the Year in North America. Prior to founding Vibrant, Doug worked at AOL Europe as Head of E-commerce and has 25 years of publishing, media and Internet experience with AOL, CompuServe, Netscape, Haymarket Publishing, and BBC Magazines/Redwood Publishing.

Innovation | Perspectives

Axios and The New York Times explore new business models

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The New York Times and Axios couldn’t be more different. The former is a venerable print newspaper founded in 1851 and finds itself in the midst of a digital transformation. The latter was born digital, launching online just last year.

While it breaks more than its fair share of news, The Times is well known for its detailed deep-dives on a variety of subjects from politics and business to cooking, sports, and book reviews. Axios, on the other hand, is the very essence of brevity concentrating on business, politics, and tech. Their stories quickly deliver the basics and let you move on with your busy life . (Though recently it has also branched out into media and science reporting.)

Yet for all these seeming differences, the two publications may have more in common than not. When it comes down to it, both want to earn consumers’ trust and loyalty by delivering quality journalism every day. And both are working on new models for delivering the news in a profitable digital package, however that manifests itself.

At this year’s TechCrunch Disrupt in New York City, Mark Thompson CEO of the Times and Mike Allen, co–founder and executive editor at Axios appeared onstage in separate interviews, and what they had to say offered a fascinating window into the changing face of the journalism business.

Short and Satisfying

Every journalist learns the ABCs –  accuracy, brevity, clarity. Axios takes this seriously but, according to Allen, their focus starts with the brevity. “Traditional newspapers served their purpose in their day, but as we got busier, it was harder to make time to read,” he said. “The idea of Axios is how can we efficiently use your time and catch you up quickly.”

Discussing The Times’ transformation into a more digitally-centric property, Thompson admitted that mistakes were made along the way. But he feels confident that they have a much stronger digital offering today. He explained that in the 70s and 80s, the newspaper expanded into multiple different sections including lifestyles, food, fashion, and people came to think of The Times brand as representing much more than news and opinion.

However, he said “I think one of the missteps in a way was in digital—that the Times got typecast again to be just being about news, where in fact it’s about culture, travel, food and so on and so forth. We’re trying to [return to] the idea of a media provider who can help you with many aspects of your life, as well as giving you the best journalism in the world and a range of opinion,” he said.

A Trusted Source

Regardless of whether you are succinct or verbose, stick to the news or offer broader insights, you need to earn readers’ trust to take a share of their valuable time. And, as we move into an era of social media sharing and an ever-growing number of news sources competing for attention, earning and maintaining trust is increasingly difficult.

Allen points out that in previous generations there were a limited number of news sources, (including The New York Times). In those days, people tended to believe what these sources proffered as news. However, with ever proliferating “news” sources, increasingly disintermediated from the source itself through social media distribution, figuring out what’s true and what’s not has become challenging.

“Now, people – very understandably – don’t know what to believe, whom to trust.” So at Axios, he said “we hope to be a safe place where you can come. And it doesn’t matter where you are on the [political] spectrum, you are going to be able to very quickly see what reality is.”

Thompson sees delivering quality journalism as the natural path to building a loyal audience. Even though some readers may disagree with the message on a given day, the objective is to maintain The New York Times reputation as a trusted source.

“Being true to ourselves and our mission is the best way to build loyalty [with] our subscribers over time. And we have a passionate relationship with our subscribers. Even when they threaten to leave, evidence suggests they are back very soon,” Thompson said.

Building the Strategy

Regardless of the age of these two publications, they are working very hard to create digital products with long-term viability. As Thompson points out, a successful digital strategy needs to be an integration of content strategy and audience engagement.

“In a way, if you can get your audience engagement right, the actual business of turning an engaged audience into money is a very downstream, and in some ways, less difficult, less critical task,” he said. “The real task is getting people’s passionate engagement with the brand, with the  content, and caring about you enough that they are willing to pay.”

Allen says that means avoiding what they call the ‘crap trap.’  “The crap trap is: If you’re just going for clicks, just going for a mass audience, you get pushed down. We are very focused on reaching people who are serious news consumers. These people who to know about something because they are curious and it helps them in their business and professions. That’s what we think about when we post something. We want to make sure it’s worthy of your time,” Allen explained.

Both of these publications are fighting for the same thing: trust, time, and attention. While their approaches may differ, their goals—and many of their underlying tenants—are remarkably similar.

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Perspectives

DCN’s must reads: week of June 15, 2017

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Here are some of the best media stories our team has read so far this week:

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Perspectives

DCN’s must reads: week of June 08, 2017

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Here are some of the best media stories our team has read so far this week:

Perspectives

Mobile ad-blocking isn’t a disaster… yet

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When Apple announced last year that it would offer mobile ad blocking on iOS 9, and Google stated it would crack down on interstitial ads on mobile websites, publishers went immediately to sky-is-falling mode, predicting that these moves would undermine their chances for mobile ad revenues. But so far the panic has been overblown, especially in the U.S.

What appears to be a burgeoning trend in Asia is still in its infancy here. This gives publishers a bit of time to readjust their advertising formats to meet consumers halfway.

That said, Google, with its own vested interests, has just announced a new offering that will definitely push publishers: A new ad blocker. Thetech giant prefers to call an “ad filter” which will be integrated into its widely popular Chrome browser. It’s a move that’s likely to shake the entire advertising industry. Then again, it may just help to thwart the dreaded rise of further third-party ad blockers.

But Apple announced its own Safari ad-blocker in the new High Sierra operating system for desktops. This one would block auto-play videos as well as ad tracking across the Internet. While Google is taking a more collaborative approach with publishers, Apple is “taking a harder line,” as Undertone’s Eric Franchi told Adweek.

Mobile Ad-Blocking Uneven

The 2016 report from Pageview, a company in the business of trying to get publishers to reevaluate their advertising models, caused a stir among some circles for its analysis of global ad blocking. Ad blocking increased by 30% last year. And among the 615 million devices blocking ads, more than half — 308 million, to be precise — were blocking on mobile. Taken in another light, that’s 16% of all smartphone users in the entire world.

Yet 94% of all that mobile ad blocking took place in the Asia-Pacific region — in countries where Internet penetration is increasingly mobile-first, and where data prices are too high for most users to want to tolerate video and other data-heavy ads. North America and Europe, meanwhile, were much calmer in comparison, no doubt thanks to more affordable data packages.

A sampling of some of these global figures show what’s exactly at stake:

  • In India, mobile ad blocking is at 28%, whereas desktop ad blocking is a mere one percent.
  • In Indonesia, 58% of users block on mobile, while just 8% do so on desktop.
  • In the U.S., one percent of users block on mobile, whereas 18% do so on desktop.
  • In the U.K., content compensation platform Sourcepointreports ad blocking is at about 18%. The figure is slightly higher in France and Germany. However, data suggests that these rates are stabilizing due to more effective communication between users and publishers.
The Underlying Concerns

It’s pretty obvious why ad blocking on mobile is increasing: Users don’t like the ad experience, and publishers aren’t effectively communicating to readers about why their use of an ad blocker is detrimental to their business.

A fair number of users don’t want to see ads at all. However, users aren’t simply hating on the content of ads. Among the reasons people chose to use an ad blocker were privacy concerns and irritation at interruptions. Users who block ads tend to be highly educated and aware of the ecosystem they’re involved in.

That being said, of course publishers feel threatened. The West may be slow to block on mobile, but the world’s next billion Internet users are going to be mobile-first.

Still, it’s not an apocalypse. In the current climate, publishers need to be more transparent to users about what’s at stake — and how they can make a difference.

Google, Apple Making Moves in Browsers

In an environment like this, it’s no surprise Google has announced what it’s hinted at for some time: A new ad blocker for its Chrome browser. The new browser will create a higher bar for the kinds of ads that appear on the web by filtering out the more annoying ones, like auto-playing video ads. The goal of the blocker, which is slated to come out in 2018, is to create a better user experience. The Coalition for Better Ads, an industry group Google belongs to, is creating the standard for permissible ads.

The tech giant is signaling its collaborative intent by giving publishers six months to prepare for the ad blocker’s release, and to adjust their advertisements accordingly. It will then essentially grade publishers on the kind of advertising they’re offering. Google is also launching a feature called “funding choices.”  This will let publishers charge users per page view if they’re already using an ad blocker.

Apple, meanwhile, announced new features for Safari in its glitzy announcements at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference recently. While they might not have been as sexy as the new HomePod speaker system or multi-tasking iPads, the default setting in Safari to block ad tracking and auto-play video will make a huge difference for publishers. (Irony alert: The link above to Apple’s website listing its new products does include — gasp! — an auto-play video ad.)

While it’s discomforting that Google and Apple wield such dominance, the companies are at least taking leadership positions where others haven’t. And they’re doing so while mobile ad blocking is still on peoples’ minds, but before it’s become unstoppable. The time is right for publishers to get their advertising house in order.

 

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Perspectives

DCN’s must reads: week of May 25, 2017

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Here are some of the best media stories our team has read so far this week:

Perspectives

A level playing field for companies and consumers

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Whether your browsing history should be private by default has become a key question in the past year. Shortly after the election, Congress repealed privacy rules that would have required broadband providers to get consent from consumers before they could share this consumer data with advertisers. Members of Congress noted that it was unfair to apply these rules only to the internet providers but not to other giant digital companies, including Facebook and Google. When Senators and Representatives returned to their home districts, however, they promptly got blasted by some of their constituents for appearing to protect the shady practices of cable companies.

Partly in response to the backlash, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) introduced the BROWSER Act. It’s a bill designed to level the playing field for companies that collect data about consumers at massive scale. And it is inclusive of all companies that are able to collect data across much of the web like ISPs, Google and Facebook. At the same time, the bill guarantees more transparency and choices for consumers. Ignore the shrill extremists in this debate. For good faith actors representing industry or consumer groups, there’s a lot to like about this bill.

In short, the bill would require companies to obtain opt-in consent from consumers before using “sensitive” data. This would include financial, location, and health information as well as browsing history and app usage. Some have argued browsing history and app usage shouldn’t rise to the level of sensitive information. However, common sense suggests otherwise. How would you feel if someone tried to buy and then publish a list of the websites you visit? In short, this bill says where you go in both the real and virtual worlds should remain private until you grant consent. I find it hard to argue with this.

The bill goes a step further in prohibiting companies from altering or denying service for consumers who do not opt-in. This provision is likely to draw the ire of industry lobbyists. But there’s a lot of merit in putting the onus on companies to develop a good “elevator pitch” for consumers. Companies that convince customers of the value to consumers are likely to be rewarded with their business—and trust.

The bill also requires a “clear and conspicuous” privacy policy that is easy to find. This generally codifies what is standard practice for good actors today. It’s unlikely that anyone can make a credible argument against providing transparency for consumers.

Finally, the bill designates enforcement authority to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). This is something that the entire cable lobby advocated for just a few months ago. Consumer advocates might want more robust enforcement tools for the FTC, but I question whether the federal rulemaking procedure is agile enough to adapt to changing technologies and business models. FTC guidance and enforcement cases can provide useful direction and clear lines for appropriate behavior.

To be clear, this is just the beginning of a long and uncertain legislative process. But, it’s an important development that Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), a conservative Republican with a decent amount of experience with tech issues, has moved down this path. The fact that a few voices at the edges of the spectrum are opposed means she probably got it exactly right.

Perspectives

Fact vs. fiction: Defining fake news and tackling the industry-wide challenge

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As the topic of fake news continues to make headlines, it becomes more important to be able to distinguish what is real news versus what is not. However, that distinction is not always an easy one to make.

While the term “fake news” seemed to arrive just in time for the U.S. presidential election, it isn’t exactly new. The intentional fabrication of stories to fool or entertain has always existed. However, the difference is that, today, social media and digital distribution channels have made it more difficult to distinguish “fake news” from “real news.”

Fake News in the Spotlight

The term “fake news” rose to popularity when Facebook faced a backlash for allegedly influencing the 2016 presidential election through the proliferation of made-up stories in users’ newsfeeds and related links. For example, the widely-shared claim that the Pope had endorsed Donald Trump.

Although Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg initially rejected the accusations, he then went on to write an open letter to readers about what the company was “doing about misinformation.” Zuckerberg mapped out a plan calling for stronger detection, easy reporting, third-party verification, and other steps aimed at disrupting the fake news economy.

Google also came under fire for sharing fake news as part of search results, after it displayed a WordPress site as a top hit with information that Trump won both the popular as well as the electoral college votes. At the time, Andrea Faville of Google issued a statement: “Moving forward, we will restrict ad serving on pages that misrepresent, misstate or conceal information about the publisher, the publisher’s content or the primary purpose of the web property.”

Meanwhile, in the months since the election, the meaning of fake news has continued to evolve. President Trump consistently uses the term to refer to media brands with which he disagrees. He famously called out BuzzFeed and CNN as fake news sources during a January media event. He also excluded them—along with The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times (which were also labeled fake news) from an informal White House press briefing in February.

So the question becomes: What exactly is fake news and how can one recognize and avoid it? Moreover, is “fake news” even a term we should be using, given its denigration in the cultural lexicon?

Sifting Fact from Fiction

 

The truth is that these are not easy questions to answer. Media outlets such as PolitiFact and Snopes have created dedicated channels to check the accuracy of news reports and employ entire staffs to weed through sources.

Meanwhile, despite their best efforts, even legitimate news sources occasionally make mistakes. The Guardian, for instance, reported in December 2016 that actor Michael Sheen was trading in acting for politics. However, Sheen completely denied the story.

Does that mean The Guardian publishes fake news? The answer is a resounding “no.” Premium publishers should not be relabeled as “fake news” based on occasional editorial errors. In fact, credible news sources have a process for printing corrections because that is part of the news business. These publishers correct errors when they are made as they always have. However, in the age of social media, where stories are retweeted and shared in real-time, it can be a challenge to ensure the most accurate story is always broadcast first.

As for whether we should be using the term “fake news” at all – that’s still up for debate. However, it is notable that some, like Facebook, are opting to reframe the dialogue by referring to this type of content as “misleading news” instead.

Fake News: The Challenge

And yet, while fake news may or may not have swayed the election, it can still have troubling, real-world results. In December 2016, a man fired an assault rifle in a Washington, DC, pizza parlor, in an incident dubbed “Pizzagate.” The gunman was investigating an unfounded “conspiracy theory” in which the business was a front for a child sex ring run by presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her campaign manager.

The conspiracy theory initially spread through viral emails, discussion threads, and social media in the weeks leading up to Election Day, reports PolitiFact. From there, fake news sites began spinning out versions of the unproven story.

So, how can reputable media outlets and social networks prevent the spread of fake news? If they ban a website’s feed, does that border on censorship and infringe on First Amendment rights?

When Business Models and Fake News Collide

In particular, Facebook and Google have been singled out for their roles in spreading fake news. Social media platforms have traditionally been hands-off of the content shared on its platform, encouraging virality instead. However, following incidents such as Pizzagate, it has made moves to educate its users and employ new fact-checkers for its content.

For example, it points users to a list of “Tips to Spot False News.” Recommendations include: “Be skeptical of headlines,” “Look closely at the URL,” “Investigate the source,” and “Watch for unusual formatting.” And if a user suspects a Facebook post is fake, they can take steps to report it as “false news” to the network administrators. If third-party fact-checkers confirm these are fake, posts then appear as “disputed.” Additionally, Facebook rolled out a “disputed” warning label to stories that could be perceived as misleading.

Google has also taken steps to weed out fake news. Search results will remain the same but a new “Fact Check” tag serves a small breakout box from a fact-checker site at the top of the results. Only time will tell if Google makes additional strides to address misleading content. For example, tackling brand safety concerns, given that advertisers frequently have no idea where their ads are being served to audiences.

Meanwhile, here at Outbrain, we’ve focused on three key areas and taken clear measures to address the issue as well. You can learn more about it here and review our infographic on how to spot fake news. We all need to do our part to responsibly deliver accurate news to the people who rely on it.

Keith Pepper is the Country Manager, North America at Outbrain. He’s based in New York City.

Perspectives

We say we don’t hate our audiences. Our mobile strategies suggest otherwise.

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Some people’s phones are filled with photos of their families, of their friends, of beautiful landscapes, of adorable pets. My phone is a museum of rage-inducing mobile experiences.

Almost everything I do on the internet, I do on my phone. Which means that every single day, I am provoked to John McEnroe-esque reactions by what Ye Average Media Organization forces audiences to endure.

Like the, “oh, you wanted to do that thing? First jump through several hoops to download our app”:

Apple: punishing you for having deleted their not-at-all-best-in-class Podcasts app.

 

Pinterest: judging you for daring to want to check out Disney Princess tattoos in your mobile browser.

Or the “sign up for our newsletter that might or might not have anything to do with the story you want to read but now can’t because of this full-screen call to action that our growth team insisted we force upon you”:

 

On the left, Fusion. On the right, Blavity. At least neither of them went for the guilt and shame strategy.

Or the “how many things that are not the thing you want can we put between you and the thing you want”, in which the distractions from the journalism include “and now some content from our sponsor” that takes up an entire screen:

What exactly do you want me to do here, HBR and Runners World?

Or the “please allow us to passive aggressively shame you as only the English can even as we take that sweet, sweet money from Outbrain and Taboola”:

And we haven’t even gotten to the proliferation of the “Read More” button, a way for publishers to make your user experience worse so they can prove to advertisers that someone saw the ad that immediately follows your dispirited tap. Or the inescapable ad that autoplays as you try scrolling past it:

Or the truly evil forced browser redirect to the app store, where you might be prompted to download an app you already own or one you would never even consider because wow, ad targeting is terrible:

And so I ask: what have our audiences done to deserve any of this? And why do we think we deserve to have any audience at all when this is how we treat them?

Stacy-Marie Ishmael is a journalist and editor from Trinidad. She has worked for the Financial Times and Buzzfeed and is currently researching mobile/news as a 2016–17 John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford.

Note: This article originally appeared on Medium.