114: FaceApp and our mortality + privacy, the power of curiosity, 20 women to follow, TripAdvisor's FABULOUS C&D letter, and more
Hi friends - you may be melting in the summer heat if you're in Boston. Hang in there.
Note: this week's newsletter includes a few of the dimensions around the recent FaceApp phenomenon this week - privacy, mortality, and blame. It's an ongoing discussion! Shoot me any of your POV on Twitter.
1. The power of being curious, every day (ep 3 of Learning from Leaders)
2. Who's behind FaceApp? Does it matter?
3. What is the danger of an app like this?
4. What made the "age challenge" go viral?
5. 20 Women in Marketing to Follow in 2019
6. TripAdvisor's cease and desist letter is a FABULOUS must-read
7. Quote of the week: Doug Kessler
It's a long one this week, you can blame my cancelled flight and a lot of airport down time :)
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1. The power of being curious, every day (ep 3 of Learning from Leaders)
Does your company cultivate a positive culture that coaches its leaders?
In the third episode of my series in partnership with Microsoft (which was trading this past week at an all-time high) I sat down with Yvette White, General Manager of Human Resources at Microsoft US.
Watch our full conversation as we talk about:
Creating a culture that coaches leaders internally
The power of being curious every day
How she has seen Microsoft change over two decades with the firm
I so enjoyed the perspective of such a thoughtful HR leader. Don't miss the chat!
2. Who's behind FaceApp? Does it matter?
These are truly wild times. Did you see a bunch of your friends, maybe some celebrities (are your friends celebrities? That's cool.) post a computer generated photo of themselves a bit more... seasoned?
My favorite was the Jonas Brothers:
It was all from an app with 80M users called FaceApp, used by millions this past week to see exactly what their old age aesthetic would be.
This story is fascinating to me from a few angles. Firstly, we never stopped to consider who made the app.
A bunch of folks, myself included, freaked out about the fact that the app's developers were based in Russia. I later learned that it was debunked that the servers themselves were located there.
But, the a-ha moment of how quickly this spread is that we, as modern citizens of a digital age, aren't well-versed in the privacy of our information in the services and sites we love to use.
As Molly Roberts says in the Washington Post:
If you’re not paying for a tool with cash, you’re probably paying some other way...
That it took fears of a Russian ruse to give us pause before opening our lives to a random app operated by who-knows-whom in who-knows-where says more about the American attitude toward technology than it does about FaceApp.
It’s boring to dig into the details of how developers mine consumer data for money. But a nefarious face-gathering operation coordinated by a foreign adversary? That’s the stuff of spy novels.
This lack of interest in the technicalities cuts to the core of the country’s privacy problem. We say we don’t want to be snooped on. But because we don’t bother to learn how snooping actually happens, we agree to all manner of abuses whenever necessary to get something we want. Consider the backlash that followed the FaceApp backlash: Who cares! Phooey on privacy, many Americans seemed to say, and then they smiled for the camera.
Phooey!
3. What is the danger of an app like this?
Many have opined about the impact of data collection like what this app is capable of. My journalistic girl crush Kara Swisher in the NYtimes says the danger here is "more than a pretty face."
From The Atlantic:
FaceApp’s scale is what’s most dangerous about it. The repercussions go above and beyond even its exploding user base. While 80 million people have said yes to the app, countless more will face consequences if the data are misused.
Consider one scenario: A bad actor uses the uploaded photos to summon a bot army pushing misinformation on social media, all with profile photos pulled from FaceApp’s servers. This wouldn’t even require FaceApp to be a malicious actor; it could be hacked.
When you download FaceApp or Meitu, you’re asked a piecemeal series of questions, carefully framed to shift responsibility away from corporate actors and onto the user:
Do you consent to having your photo taken?
Do you permit access to your device and to your photos?
Privacy policies always frame the terms of service as personal consumer choices. Yes, the choice to download and upload is yours, but the ramifications are far-reaching. Data collected for one purpose can always be used for another. Some of the worst misuses of face data come from one bad actor seizing on thousands of people who, as far as they knew, agreed to take on the responsibility themselves.
And, a further question... Who do we blame?
Should we put the onus on users for our lack of privacy literacy? FaceApp and other nefarious-seeming apps? The Atlantic piece above also argues that we tend to get pissed at these individual apps and their creators, rather than address the larger systemic reality:
This is a silly blame game and a distraction. FaceApp is not just FaceApp’s fault. Data collection is the plumbing of the modern web, and FaceApp is but one of millions of pipes.
4. What made the "age challenge" go viral?
I was amazed at the simple virality of this app. What made it so popular?
In short, our obsession with mortality.
FaceApp proves that we cannot resist the temptation to peek at our decline, and yet we view these images as speculative fiction, not realized and therefore unreal. (NYTimes)
(Read the full piece for a heart-wrenching look at mortality and decline.)
The app also satisfied many of the laws of virality. Per Jonah Berger these are:
Social currency
Triggers
Emotion
Public
Practical Value
Stories
In a sense we are addicted to using social to tell different stories about ourselves.
Clinical psychologist and technology researcher Margaret E. Morris argues, in Salon, that this is about imagining "expansion of the self."
"How could I grow? How could I be different? What possibilities are there for me beyond how I currently present myself to the world?”
And then, in addition to that," she continued, "what different stories could I tell to myself and other people about who I am?”
5. 20 Women in Marketing to Follow in 2019
Thank you to Julia McCoy for including me on this list, and for unabashedly calling out the misogyny that too-often fills industry lists like this.
If you’re a woman in marketing yourself, or often feel like a lone wolf in a room crowded with testosterone, this list is for you. This list features women who are at the top of their game and the top of their field.
Yes girl. Full list here!
6. TripAdvisor's cease and desist letter is a FABULOUS must-read
I don't mean to give MORE attention to the ridiculous Straight Pride Parade (as any discussion around this is like fuel to their sad tiki-torch fire), but TripAdvisor was falsely listed as a "sponsor" of the event, and their legal response is hilariously filled with references to Queen, Madonna, Robyn, and Cher.
Via Liam Martin, WBZ
Amazing. If you can't read that image, click here for a text version.
Thanks to Sarah Hodkinson for the heads up!
7. Quote of the week:
"A marketer who doesn’t understand the importance of security/reliability/UX should not be a marketer. And a ‘webmaster’ that doesn’t understand what the site is actually for shouldn’t be on the web team."
From Doug Kessler of Velocity Partners' excellent piece, "B2B marketers: take back your website!"
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Have a wonderful weekend, and thanks, as always, for reading. I'm on vacay in Paris next week (I KNOW TOUGH LIFE), but will see you again in August.
Best,
Katie Martell
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