Mediaboss Marketing

Illustration by Ben Merrylees

Snapchat lights up on 800 million screens, Instagram opens on 500 million screens and Facebook is seen on 1.8 billion screens each month.

Odds are, if you have a smartphone, you have at least one of these social media apps. In fact, the website Statista declares, As of 2016, 78 percent of the United States population has a social networking profile. Thats nearly four out of five Americans. The majority of users on Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook are young people from the millennial and centennial generations. Many older, electronically challenged people are teased because of their inability to understand and navigate through the inner workings of these websites. They are commonly confused by the purpose of such networks. However, youths seem to know exactly what, where and when to post on each. An adult will ask Why post this here and that there? and Whats the point in having all three? A teen might say, Because thats just how it is. But, its the varying structures of social networks that result in specific behavioral norms on these apps, allowing for different means of self-expression.

Snapchat enables individual messages to be sent from one friend to another in the form of a video or image, potentially with a caption. Users can also send a text message on the apps chat feature. The most prominent characteristic of this network is that it is temporary. Once a picture is received, it cannot be seen again. Once a video is uploaded to a users story, the ten-seconds-or-under recording will disappear after 24 hours. Of course, there are exceptions. The capturer of these moments is able to save their memories to their own device. The same goes for chats, unless they are saved, they will vanish when the screen displaying the text is closed. The receiver of the moment is also able to save an image by taking a screenshot.

Snapchat is, the most popular (app) by a landslide, says Business Insider after interviewing 60 teenagers from across America. The format of this network allows users to instantly send their chosen friend(s) a view of what theyre doing at an exact moment. There is no carried weight or fear of judgement that comes with the permanence of posts on other apps. This causes users to behave carelessly, sending ugly selfies and blurry pictures of comedic incidents. With access to easy, rapid communication like this, Snapchat doesnt fail to fascinate its users.

Instagram successfully captivates an audience of 300 million active users daily. With a focus on photos, this apps grid-like format clearly displays posted images and allows for simple viewing. The most recent photo uploaded appears in the upper left corner under a persons profile. The app also has direct message where users communicate through texting. The number of followers is shown beside the username and amount of likes is seen under each image or under-one-minute video. Depending on who a user follows and the more pictures they look at, the more the search page will show photos that reflect that persons preferences.

Professional Instagrams run by businesses, photographers, and models thrive on this network due to the easy publicity. Eye-catching photographs encourage large amounts of people to tap the follow button so they can see the images a person posts by scrolling through their home screen. Growing numbers of followers motivate amatuer photographers to obtain as many likes as they can, as they attempt to craft their pictures into a piece of art. Helper apps like VSCO and Instasize are made for users to edit their photos. Dramatic selfies, scenic views, images of food and pictures against colorful walls (all taken on smartphones) fill the majority of feeds.

This growing amount of high quality images has pressured users into making additional accounts called finstas (fake instagrams) where they post whatever they want without worry of quality, theme or aesthetic. Finstas are often filled with impulsive images and ridiculous screenshots, whereas real accounts contain carefully crafted photo art. Artsy photos from friends next door and humorous videos from friends across the sea both are seen on an Instagrammers home screen.

On a Facebook home screen, photographs and text are there for all to see, however, this website has much more. The app constantly encourages users to post by displaying, Whats on your mind? at the top of the home page along with suggesting that people Check In (at this location). Like Instagram, users can post photos, videos, promote their business and see what friends are doing. However, only on Facebook will people successfully connect with one another in a way no other website can. Family photos are posted, events are scheduled, public service announcement videos are spread, emotions are voiced and birthday reminders show up everyday. This format is designed for people to create a profile that exhibits who they are and what they think. Facebook becomes an archive with photos and updates informing users of their friends whereabouts, activities and emotions.

Facebook also provides a separate app called Messenger which is nearly identical to iMessage on Apple products. People talk directly with their Facebook friends and make group chats for easy communication. Facebook is the most widely used social media network with ages ranging from tweens to octogenarians. But, why does everyone have it? Facebook makes the complicated, arduous task of communicating simple. People want to feel like they are still involved with their friends lives. Talking on the phone is a hassle, writing a letter is burdensome, but liking a Facebook post is nearly effortless. Although this downplays the importance of true correspondence, a like or comment is like someone saying, Hey, this is cool and I care enough to tell you that. Facebook is the ultimate network for communicating.

The telos of social media is to connect and apps like Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook do a good job at bridging the gap between people. These networks act as lenses into a persons world, each showing a varying perspective in a unique format. The website Statista remarks that, the number of worldwide users is expected to reach some 2.95 billion by 2020, around a third of Earths entire population. This mass amount of electronic connection is powerful. To consumers, programmers revise the structure of a network in, what seems like, a blink of an eye. With only a small update, the way people communicate, behave and express themselves can be changed for billions. The internet did not become widely used until 20 years ago. It was just starting to exist 30 years ago. Today we tap our fingers on a screen and send a video to a person thousands of miles away within seconds. Look at how much we can do now and then imagine how much well be doing next.

The rest is here:
Snapchat? Instagram? An Analysis of Social Media - Montpelier Bridge

A study of adult social network users in Russia has found that humor and health are the topics most likely to draw their attention in the social realm.

According to April 2017 research from Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM), the most popular social media topics were humor, mentioned by 43% of respondents, health (41%) and news (41%).

But age, gender and location skew those preferences.

For example, young adultsages 18 to 24were most interested in humor, sport, and science and technologies; but their older counterparts, those ages 60 and older, sought out news, health and food topics.

And among genders, men preferred sport, cars, and science and technologies topics, while women said they most often opted for topics such as healthy lifestyle, food and recipes, as well as family and children.

When it came to which social networking sites users turned to most, homegrown sites VK (formerly Vkontakte) and Odnoklassniki.ru remained the most popular by far, used by 61% and 54% of respondents, respectively.

Most respondents used those sites at least several times a week, if not every day or almost daily. Among VK users, 78% of 18- to 24-year-olds and 54% of 25- to 34-year-olds turned to it daily.

The US-import sites that dominate much of the rest of internet users social networking in Europe and the wider Western world remain much less popular in Russia. VCIOMs study found only 20% of the countrys social networkers used Facebook, and only 11% used Twitter. Photo-focused Instagram was used by 25%, which was enough to make it Russias third most popular social site.

Overall social network usage continues to grow in Russia. This year, 75.0 million people in the country are expected to use a social network at least once per month, up 3.6% from 2016, according to eMarketers most recent forecast for that activity in Central and Eastern Europe.

Other researchers have found most of those users are open to following brands on social sites. In an April 2017 study by Mail.Ru, which owns VK, Odnoklassniki and My.com, 66% of social network users in Russia ages 14 and older queried said they followed brand pages on those sites.

Cliff Annicelli

See the article here:
To Reach Social Networkers in Russia, Be Funny - eMarketer - eMarketer

Douglas F. Brent

By Douglas F. Brent and Victoria Allen, Stoll Keenon Ogden PLLC

Editors Note: Victoria Allen is a 2017 Summer Associate with SKO.

The digital age has ushered in a multitude of location mechanisms on a communication device. Anyone who has paid roaming fees knows their phone connects to more networks than just those designated by their wireless provider.

Cellphones work by establishing a connection with cell towers. Each tower projects unique directional signals, so a cellphone picking up a signal from the north has distinct CSLI, or cell site location information, from a signal broadcast from the same towers southern sector. As they manage their networks, carriers record these connections.

With thousands of new microsites with smaller coverage areas, CSLI rivals GPS as a way to nearly pinpoint a devices location.

CSLI and law enforcement

In thousands of cases each year, law enforcement agencies obtain the CSLI associated with suspects phones under the Stored Communications Act, instead of securing a search warrant based on probable cause. This tower dump can reconstruct a suspects location and movements over time, and is effective in crime solving.

Nearly all federal courts have agreed that getting a tower dump from cellular providers does not require a warrant. As recently as 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review any of those decisions.

But on June 5, the Court granted a defendants request to review his conviction upheld last year by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in USA v. Timothy Carpenter.

The Court will consider whether the warrantless seizure and search of cellphone records revealing Carpenters location and movements over 127 days violated his Constitutional rights, specifically Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable searches and seizures.

Carpenter was nabbed by the FBI in a string of armed robberies at Radio Shacks and T-Mobile stores around southeastern Michigan and northwestern Ohio. After receiving a judges order to obtain records from wireless carriers, the FBI determined that Carpenter had been less than two miles from each store when the robberies took place.

A Michigan jury convicted Carpenter and co-defendants, and a district judge sentenced him to multiple 25-year terms. The sentence was affirmed last year and Carpenter filed for Supreme Court review, even though two terms ago the Court declined to review a nearly identical decision from the Eleventh Circuit.

Why answer an unasked question?

We have written previously about why courts have generally held a warrant is not required to access cell site location information. The privacy protection provided by the Fourth Amendment guards individuals against unreasonable searches and seizures by law enforcement. Reasonableness is grounded in whether the person asserting the protection has an actual expectation of privacy that society will recognize.

But the Supreme Court has held that parties lack an expectation of privacy in business records created by third parties, like a telephone company that records the numbers dialed to initiate a call. Courts dont treat the review of most third-party transactional records as a search at all.

The resulting third-party doctrine, though developed in a different technology era, remains in use today. Regarding cellphone network data for geo-location, the records of wireless service providers have not triggered the same level of privacy protection as more direct methods of surveillance, like a hidden tracking device.

To fill the gap between Fourth Amendment protection and no protection at all, Congress created the Stored Communications Act (SCA), which requires that the government present reasonable grounds but not probable cause to obtain records like CSLI. Whether such information is also protected by the Fourth Amendment has become a more difficult question as transactional records become more numerous and more capable of revealing seemingly private information.

Some judges have been uncomfortable applying the third-party doctrine to pervasive collections, like thousands of locations recorded over months at a time. Judges have also questioned whether the doctrine applies to data not voluntarily conveyed by cellphone users. In the earliest cases involving phone networks, the information voluntarily conveyed was the number dialed by a suspect. In contrast, cellphone users dont so directly influence which cell tower their phone connects to.

The Supreme Courts decision to review Carpenters claims related to CSLI validates concern that the Fourth Amendment is being browbeaten into retreat by the swell of information that is conveyed to third parties. The Courts decision to hear Carpenter is an indication that the Supreme Court is ready to reconsider that decades old third-party doctrine in light of todays technology.

And it may be time.

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Your vanishing location privacy: Why the Supreme Court is giving wireless networks a look - Insider Louisville

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow warned other media outletson Thursdaythat she believes she was provided forged National Security Agency documents alleging collusion between a Trump campaign official andRussia's efforts to influence last year's presidential election.

I feel like I need to send this up like a flare for other news organizations in particular, Maddow said on her programThursday night.

Somebody, for some reason, appears to be shopping a fairly convincing fake NSA document that purports to directly implicate somebody from the Trump campaign in working with the Russians in their attack in the election, she said.

Maddow explained that she and her producers compared the document they received with a leaked NSA document published last month by The Intercept. That document quickly resulted in the arrest of a 26-year-old federal contractor, Reality Winner.

Maddow said she thinks the document she received was created by copying elements of the document published by The Intercept.

The MSNBC host made a similar allegation back in March when she suggested Trump himself may have leaked his 2005 tax documents.

He's the only person who could leak it without concern of being sued by Trump or anyone else, she said at the time. They're trying to threaten us for publishing them which is complete bull.

David Cay Johnston, the reporter who obtained the tax documents, also said while discussing the documents on The Rachel Maddow ShowTuesdaythat Trump could have been behind the leak, as did MSNBC "Morning Joe"co-host Joe Scarborough.

Excerpt from:
Maddow warns other media of fake NSA documents - The Hill

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., speaking during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing last month about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. (Alex Brandon / AP Photo)

A controversial surveillance measure set to expire at the end of 2017 could be made permanent through a new piece of GOP legislation. Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton proposed Senate Bill 1297 last month, which addresses a critical component of the National Security Agencys warrantless surveillance program.

At stake is Section 702 of the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act (amended in 2008), which allows U.S. surveillance of foreign communications. The Electronic Frontier Foundation explained:

Section 702 surveillance violates the privacy rights of millions of people. This warrantless spying should not be allowed to continue, let alone be made permanent as is.

As originally enacted, Section 702 expires every few years, giving lawmakers the chance to reexamine the broad spying powers that impact their constituents. This is especially crucial as technology evolves and as more information about how the surveillance authority is actually used comes to light, whether through government publication or in the press.

If Congress were to approve Cottons bill, lawmakers would not only be ignoring their constituents privacy concerns, but they would also be ceding their obligation to regularly review, debate, and update the law.

Cottons bill is receiving support from fellow Republican senators, although criticism of the bill does not fall neatly along partisan lines. On June 7, lawmakers discussed the legislation during a hearing in Washington. The New York Times reported:

This is a tool that is essential to the safety of this country, the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, told Congress at a hearing on Wednesday. I did not say the same thing about the collection of telephone dialing information by the N.S.A. I think thats a useful tool; 702 is an essential tool, and if it goes away, well be less safe as a country. And I mean that.

Mr. Comey also warned that one of the proposed changes a new requirement that a warrant be obtained to search for Americans information in the surveillance repository risked a failure to connect dots about potential threats.

But Representative Ted Poe, Republican of Texas, sought to warn other lawmakers that Congress needed to impose a warrant requirement.

Privacy is being betrayed in the name of national security, Mr. Poe told congressional aides at an event to discuss Fourth Amendment issues and legislation late last month.

Cotton argued during the hearing that to allow this program to expire on December 31 would hurt both our national security and our privacy rights. He also used the London terror attack of early June as evidence for the need for increased surveillance. Cotton said:

The attacks in London last weekend exposed in a matter of minutes just how vulnerable our free societies truly are. All it takes is a van or a knife and an unsuspecting bystander to turn a fun night out on the town into a horrific nightmare. Course, we shouldnt need any reminders, but let me give one yet again: We are at war with Islamic extremists. We have been for years, and, Im sorry to say, theres no end in sight. Its easy to forget this as we go about our daily lives, but our enemies have not-and they will not. Theyve never taken their eyes off the ultimate target either: the United States.

Yes, were at war with a vicious and unyielding foe. And just as our enemy can attack us with the simplest of everyday tools, the strongest shield we have in our defense is just as basic: It is the intelligence information of knowing who is talking to whom about what, where, when, and why. After the 9/11 attacks, our national-security agencies developed cutting-edge programs that allowed us to figure out what the bad guys were up to and stop them before they could perpetrate such heinous attacks. Very often the intelligence theyve collected has made the difference between life and death for American citizens.

He concluded by noting the bill has the support of every Republican senator on the Intelligence Committee. Other members of the intelligence community have expressed support for the legislation as well. Tech Crunch provided further analysis of the June 7 hearing:

NSA Director Michael Rogers broke down two scenarios in which the core controversy, namely the incidental violation of the right to privacy for U.S. citizens, comes up. He claimed that in 90 percent of cases, that form of collection is a result of two foreign targets who talk about a third person who is in the U.S. As Rogers tells it, 10 percent of the time a foreign target ends up talking to an American citizen. Because American citizens have Fourth Amendment rights, running into Americans in the course of foreign surveillance creates the sticky situation known as incidental collection, a major focus for privacy advocates seeking reform.

In the course of justifying Section 702 as an invaluable tool for counterterrorism and counterproliferation efforts, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats claimed that agencies have made herculean efforts to get a count on how many Americans have been affected, but in spite of those efforts it remains impossible. He went on to undermine his argument by implying that it probably would be possible, but that he chooses not to allocate resources to the task when the intelligence community could be focusing on imminent concerns in countries like Iran and North Korea. I cant justify such a diversion of critical resources, Coats said.

He went on to note that without Section 702, intelligence agencies would have to obtain a court order issued due to probable cause ostensibly the bar that needs to be cleared in order to surveil U.S. citizens. Thats a relatively higher threshold than we require to foreign intelligence information, Coats said, noting that hed prefer not to need to clear the Fourth Amendment bar when investigating foreign targets.

In a broad appeal on 702s utility, Rogers went so far as to claim that 702 [created] insights on the Russian involvement in 2016 election, providing intelligence that would otherwise not have been possible.

There is, however, growing opposition to the bill. The American Civil Liberties Union has argued against it, as has California Democrat Dianne Feinstein.

Sen. Dianne Feinsteinwho has historically been sympathetic to the intelligence communitysaid she could not support a bill that makes Section 702 permanent, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. We cannot accept lawmakers ignoring our privacy concerns and their responsibility to review surveillance law, and our lawmakers need to hear that.

Posted by Emma Niles.

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Originally posted here:
GOP Lawmakers Aim to Continue NSA Foreign Surveillance Through New Bill - Truthdig