Dan Snyder Helps Us Demonstrate The Streisand Effect In Numbers

from the nice-work-dan dept

Having coined the term "The Streisand Effect" a while back, I'm always interested in more examples of it in action. We recently talked about how Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder sued the Washington City Paper over a tongue-in-cheek article criticizing him, and the response may actually give us some Streisand Effect data. Paul Alan Levy sends over a neat blog post from Tech Cocktail that tries to quantify how much more attention was driven to the article Snyder was so upset about. The answer? An awful lot. As you can see, the article got a bunch of comments early on, and then it died out, as comments tend to do. Then the lawsuit hit. And suddenly the article got more than twice as many comments as it had accumulated up until then. And, of course, the story spread via social networking services as well:

The article garnered 554 tweets and over 7,000 Facebook (FB) likes. A quick survey of City Paper articles shows that few, if any, other articles by Mr. McKenna rate more than 5 comments, tweets or FB likes.

So by suing, Snyder helped drive a ton more traffic to the article that was critical of him. And if you think that within all that traffic some folks are agreeing with Snyder's take on things... again that doesn't appear to be the case:

Activity on the Paper�s Facebook Group has increased and is overwhelmingly supportive, as is the Twittosphere.  Sentiment towards Snyder is unanimously negative as measured by tools like Tweet Feel which at my last count showed a 100% anti-Snyder rating, well below Hosni Mubarak who came in at 67% negative.

Yeah. Perhaps next time, before suing over some minor criticism, people might take such results into account.

Filed Under: dan snyder, data, streisand effect

UK Government Sets Up 'Public Data Corporation' To Free Up Data

from the what-a-nice-idea dept

Glyn Moody points us to the news that the UK government is setting up a "Public Data Corporation" with the charge of working with various government agencies and pulling together data and freeing it up for the public:

The Corporation will, for the first time, bring together Government bodies and data into one organisation and provide an unprecedented level of easily accessible public information and drive further efficiency in the delivery of public services.

Supporting the Government's growth agenda, it will open up opportunities for innovative developers, businesses and members of the public to generate social and economic growth through the use of data.

Of course, it looks like it's not freeing up all data. While it says that it will make data available freely in many cases, it may also look to sell some of the data. Still, this definitely seems like a good step forward.

Filed Under: data, uk

The Amazing Ability Of People To Simply Ignore Data That Proves What They Believe Is Wrong

from the the-hall-of-shame dept

Nate Silver, who, before he became famous as a political data analyzer on his FiveThirtyEight website (now hosted by the NY Times), was famous to a much smaller group of folks for his similar data analysis of baseball data at Baseball Prospectus. Every so often, he jumps back to baseball analysis, such as with his recent effort to question some of the common wisdom concerning the Baseball Hall of Fame. There's a common complaint among fans and some in the press that the Hall of Fame has become "watered down" in some way, and that they're letting in players who really shouldn't qualify. The comment that is repeated way too frequently is "It's the Hall of Fame, not the Hall of Very Good." However, Silver breaks down the actual data, and notes that percentage-wise significantly fewer players are getting into the Hall of Fame today than in the past. He shows the following chart to help prove the point: As he notes, the point is not to say that one period is correct, and the other is not, but simply to challenge the suggestion that admission to the Hall of Fame has become much easier today. And, yes, he also discusses some of the obvious counterpoints -- such as the fact that, thanks to expansion, there are now more players -- and why there are other equalizing forces (the internationalization of the game, for example).

It's an interesting article if you're interested in that kind of thing. But, what's most entertaining is that a large number of the comments on the story seem to simply refuse to accept what the data says. They don't refute the data. They don't suggest explanations that would explain the data. They flat-out ignore it and insist that the Hall of Fame has been watered down these days. I noticed this thanks to King Kaufman who aggregated some of the sillier comments. Here are a few:

• "Too stringent"? Au contraire. Over the last couple of decades they have admitted so many bums that it defies description. If anything, the standards should be tightened. There are perhaps six active players who should EVER be considered.
• We've dumbed down America and now you want to water down what makes a true athlete great. They should measure up or not be considered!!!! That's the problem with America continually relaxing standards and codes.!!!!
• The statistical look at the question is entirely misdirected. There have been a handful of standout players in the game, something less than 50 in total.
• i thought the hall was for extraordinary accomplishments not just very good ...the hall is so diluted these days.

There are probably some decent explanations for these kinds of mass delusions. I would guess that people who either never actually saw some of the Hall of Fame players from an earlier generation, or saw them so long ago and are overcome with nostalgia, are dealing with a bit of confirmation bias -- where they only remember (or know about) the highlights, and ignore the rest. With more recent players, they've probably seen them a lot more, or remember things a lot more clearly, and thus the "great" feats are diluted in their heads by the fact that they weren't preternaturally good (but, no one is).

That said, we often see this sort of thing around here. I've presented numerous studies concerning certain areas of interest, and almost immediately we get comments that don't try to rebut the data, or point to errors in the studies (and there may very well be errors or confounding factors), but to simply insist that what they've always believed simply must be true. It seems like a form of cognitive dissonance on display in ways that are both troubling and amusing. It's the basis of what I call "faith-based" decision making, where actual data is simply ignored for what "must be" true.

Filed Under: baseball, data, hall of fame, studies

Revealed: The Mysterious Cleavage-To-Age Effectiveness Ratio For Dating Sites

from the abs-it-up dept

Dennis points us to dating site OKCupid's Sam Yagan revealing some of the data crunching results they've done on what works and what doesn't work on dating sites. It's actually pretty impressive just how much data the site has to work with, so there are some interesting (and some amusing) findings. Of course, some of it is blindingly obvious: women showing cleavage get a greater response. But did you know that said cleavage is apparently much more effective for women who are 32 than women who are 18? Apparently, at 18, "revealing" shots get 24% more interest, but at 32 such photos get 79% more interest. Not quite sure what to make of that. On the flip side, apparently guys showing their abs actually works... though, as Yagan rightly points out, there's a self-selection issue here, where it's pretty much only guys who have good abs who choose to reveal them in their profile photos.

Yagan also points out some differences about whether or not your profile picture should involve you staring into the camera. Turns out it depends on your gender:

So on the photos we've learned a bunch of things. We've learned that you should be doing something interesting. We've learned that if you are a man, you shouldn't look straight into the camera because that's intimidating to women. If you are a woman, you should be looking into the camera because men don't want to imagine you looking at some other guy. They want you looking straight at them. So we've learned that if you take a photo in your bathroom or a photo taken with your cell phone, those have a more authentic, more intimate appeal and those actually do very, very well.

I find this kind of stuff fascinating (not because I'm interested in online dating -- happily married and all that) but because suddenly all sorts of bizarre data is now available that opens up a window into the human brain that just wasn't there before. The obvious stuff is no surprise, clearly, but some of the specifics and other oddities really are fascinating, and give you a data-based look into human psychology.

Filed Under: data, dating

FAA Has No Clue About Who Owns Approximately 1/3 Of All Private And Commercial Planes

from the our-government-at-work dept

johnjac points us to the news that the FAA's record keeping is so bad that it is "missing key information" on who owns 119,000 out of 357,000 registered private and commercial airplanes. Apparently, the FAA is so bad at record keeping that its solution is to phase out every plane's registration and demand that everyone apply for a new registration to get its database back on track. Apparently, the old system was that you just had to register once, and then you were responsible for letting the FAA know if info changed, but not everyone does that. So, basically, the FAA is rather clueless about approximately 1/3 of what's in the sky.

Filed Under: airplanes, data, faa
Companies: faa

Lieberman Introduces New Censorship Bill In Kneejerk Response To Wikileaks

from the where's-that-first-amendment dept

With Amazon dumping Wikileaks due to pressure from Senator Joe Lieberman, it seems to have only emboldened Lieberman to shred more of the First Amendment he's supposed to be protecting. First, he has continued pressuring other companies to not host Wikileaks content. This has resulted in Tableau Software removing a visualization of Wikileaks data. People have pointed out that there was no sensitive data in what it had published, but because of Lieberman's grandstanding, the company felt the need to remove the chart. Of course, you can still find the damn chart everywhere online, and I'm going to publish it here (Senator, feel free to give me a call about this), because it should be damn obvious that publishing something like this is not revealing any sensitive info. It's all based on the data around the leaked cables, not the cables themselves. As if to more directly trample the First Amendment, Lieberman has now introduced an anti-Wikileaks bill, which would expand the Espionage Act to make it a criminal act if you publish the name of a US intelligence source. Note that it is already illegal to leak such a name, but this bill seeks to make it illegal to publish the names after they've been leaked. This seems like a classic violation of the First Amendment. As Wired notes, something like this would make it illegal for a newspaper to publish the fact that former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noreiga was once a paid CIA intelligence source. Hell, there are claims that Osama bin Laden worked with the CIA decades ago. Should it be illegal to report that?

Here's the really ridiculous aspect of all of this, however. In an internet era when all of these details are available from tons of sources and file sharing networks well beyond any single website, going after websites to censor them and making it a crime to report factual information is such an antiquated and pointless move. Senator Lieberman's actions here are like trying to deal with a few bees entering his home by burning it down. Not only is it a massive overreaction that damages some key infrastructure, but it's also unlikely to be even remotely effective.

Filed Under: censorship, data, first amendement, joe lieberman
Companies: amazon, tableau software

FCC Apparently Not Satisfied With FTC's Google WiFi Investigation, Opens Its Own Investigation

from the over-what-exactly? dept

So the FTC concluded its investigation of Google's Street View WiFi data collection screwup with no actual penalties. Since then, there's been a lot of pressure from Congressional reps who have a long history of complaining about Google to get the government to reopen the investigation. So, it should make them happy to know that the FCC appears to be picking up where the FTC left off and is opening its own investigation. Of course, I'm not quite sure what Google did here that's under the FCC's mandate. Did it violate the FCC's Part 15 rules in some way? I can't see much that Google did that would fall under the FCC's purview, so I can't imagine this investigation ending with any serious consequences for Google but it seems like this is one political football that just won't go away.

Filed Under: data, investigation, street view, wifi
Companies: fcc, google

UK National Rail Threatens App Maker For Even Discussing His Train Time App

from the it's-better-if-people-don't-know-the-train-times dept

Last year, we had a discussion about all of the various transit authorities that had been threatening various app makers for creating rather useful train schedule apps for mobile devices. Now you might think (if you thought) that transit groups would be thrilled with such apps, which would make taking the train easier and more convenient. And, really, when you realize that others would be building these apps that get more people to take the train, without you even having to pay them as developers, it sounds absolutely great for the folks who make the trains run. If they thought. But, apparently, thinking is not a pre-requisite for some of these jobs, and many of them couldn't think beyond "those apps use our data" and freaked out. In some cases it was because the train operators wanted to license the data. In some cases it was because they were offering or building their own, competing, app.

National Rail, in the UK, seems particularly short-sighted about this, and now they're taking it even further, threatening people for even talking about their threats. Glyn Moody points us to the news that a developer, Alex Hewson, who had created a web (not mobile) app that used National Rail's open API, which was even listed in the government-run list of open data feeds that developers are encouraged to make use of, who was first told to shut down the app (a year after it had been running). The backstory here is even more ridiculous. Even with the open API, Hewson sent a note to the National Rail asking if it was okay if he turned his web app into an Android app -- and charged enough to cover the costs of development. At first he received no response, so he sent another letter, and finally got this response:

"I can confirm the National Rail Enquiries Website is for personal and non-commercial use only. Therefore, the suggestion made in your letter, to utilise the data to build an Android application is expressly prohibited. I'm sorry that we cannot be of any further assistance."

Based on that he killed the Android app idea -- even though the response is a bit odd, as it implies that any Android app is automatically a "commercial use." Either way, apparently National Rail is now working to lock up the API, and quietly put up a note saying that to use it, you would soon need to use "tokens" which you could only get with a license. Hewson only discovered this after a friend pointed it out, so Hewson sent a friendly note to National Rail asking for a token, noting that his app was purely non-commercial. He also asked if there was some mailing list he could sign up for, so he wouldn't be surprised by such things.

Instead, he got a demand that he immediately shut down his app, and a haughty claim that "there has always been a requirement for a license to use this service." Of course, as Hewson pointed out, that contradicted what the National Rail had told him earlier. The author of the note, Derek Parlour, also noted that it was "highly likely" any license would require a fee. Of course, that seems strange. That's because in response to an article from Wired criticizing National Rail's refusal to open up its data, National Rail's chief executive, Chris Scoggins, scolded Wired saying:

It isn't true that National Rail Enquiries (NRE) refuses to open up its data feeds.... We've opened up our data to a range of organisations, often free of charge, so they can provide information about trains.

That seems to to contradict Parlour's comments. That led to Hewson trying to reach Scoggins via a comment on Scoggins blog. Scoggins replied -- not by admitting to a mistake, or by fixing things and allowing this app which (again, must we remind everyone?) makes it more convenient for people to take the train, but by threatening Hewson for publishing Derek Parlour's original email, claiming that it was "confidential."

So, not only can you not use the "open" API (that Scoggins himself claims is open, despite it not being so), you also can't even discuss the contradictory and misleading statements made by National Rail employees. Hewson admits that there was a confidentiality statement on the email, but just like in another recent story about someone in the UK relying too much on a poorly written confidentiality notice, the National Rail's confidentiality notice only says you can't share it if you're not the intended recipient. Since he was the intended recipient, the confidentiality policy clearly states he is free to share it.

As it stands, it sounds like Hewson may be giving up on the app. He can't even get a direct answer to the simple question of whether or not he needs to shut down the existing app (which, yes, I'll say it again, is being used to help more people use the train) while they discuss any kind of licensing deal. No matter how you look at this, National Rail appears to be making a series of really ridiculously bad moves here. Not opening up the data is just the first mistake. Then trying to abuse confidentiality policies, along with having inconsistent overall policies, just makes the entire operation seem like a mess.

Filed Under: apis, apps, data, open access, uk
Companies: national rail

Court Lets Amazon Protect Customer Purchase Info In North Carolina

from the phew dept

While Amazon was receiving a giant bill from Texas for not collecting sales tax, it had a good day concerning a similar issue in North Carolina. As you may recall, the state of North Carolina was demanding that Amazon tell it about every purchase made by a North Carolina resident, so that it could go after each of them for sales tax. Amazon already provided a ton of info to the state, including the date and price of each transaction, along with the city, county and zip code to which the order was shipped, along with the product codes identifying the products ordered. Basically, Amazon is already handing over the details of everything you purchase -- except your name and address. Except North Carolina wanted that too, which seemed like an even bigger privacy violation.

Thankfully, a district court judge has ruled against the state, noting that it has "no legitimate need" for the info -- though, did leave open the possibility that a "narrower" request for info could be legal. Of course, to some of us, it seems like Amazon is already turning over way too much info. What people buy in a state is not the state government's business.

Filed Under: data, north carolina, privacy, sales tax
Companies: amazon

Thief Steals Computer... Then Sends Its Owner USB Stick With All His Lost Data

from the how-nice dept

Losing a computer can be quite traumatic, especially if you're not good about backing up your data. So, imagine the surprise from a professor who had his laptop stolen (without having backed up his data), only to find a week later that the thief had (quite considerately) copied all of the professor's personal files to a USB device (stolen with the computer) and sent the USB stick with the data back to the professor's home. It appears the thief tried to be as considerate as possible, in that while he had originally stolen the professors full backpack, including wallet, credit cards, keys and more, he later returned it all, except for the computer (and somewhat inexplicably, the professor's library card). As the professor noted, this certainly seems like an awful lot of effort to go through. None of this, of course, excuses the thief for stealing the laptop in the first place, but it's quite a story. Of course, the professor remains unnamed, so there's a part of me that wonders how true the whole story is in the first place...

Filed Under: data, thieves