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Adam Rizzieri Newsmax - Sanctions on Putin Russia-Ukraine War

Newsmax: Big Tech, Business Attempt to Punish Russia Could Backfire

Posted on | by devops
Originally published on March. 11, 2022 at Newsmax.com, Written by Marisa Herman

A flurry of multinational corporations and U.S.-based Big Tech companies have rushed to declare their own economic war on Russia to punish President Vladimir Putin for his invasion of Ukraine — but some experts fear the offensive will actually embolden the Kremlin.

Since the Ukraine invasion began three weeks ago, a growing number of Western companies spanning various sectors — banking, retail, entertainment, Big Tech — have suspended or completely severed their presence in Russia.

While a spate of stringent international sanctions and the closing of airspace to Russian planes has made it difficult for many companies to carry out business as usual in Russia anyway, Atlanta-based marketing and branding expert David Johnson said many companies opted to withdraw from the region to avoid being seen as supportive or even merely neutral amid the military conflict that’s earned Putin global scorn.

Businesses that opt to cut operations in Russia are currently backed by a majority of Americans and risk losing business in the U.S. and other Western countries if they don’t take a stand. According to a recent Morning Consult survey, more than 75% of Americans support corporations severing Russian business relations.

“As public pressure grows to pull out of the Russian market, businesses are balancing the desire to protect employees working in Russia against the reputational harm they may suffer by continuing to do business there,” said Wendy Patrick, an attorney, business law lecturer at San Diego State University, and Newsmax insider.

She points out that when a company decides to sever ties, it is weighing an impact felt by a “range of relevant stakeholders.”

“Contemporary brand management involves recognizing the risk that unpopular or politically incorrect corporate decisions go viral quickly, and can result in social media-fueled boycotts,” Patrick said.

But despite winning consumer support at home, Johnson fears that many companies’ departure from Russia will ultimately hurt ordinary people in the country, and possibly even embolden Putin as the nation loses access and connections to the West.

In response to the growing number of companies pulling out of Russia — a contingent that includes Disney, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Starbucks — Moscow has retaliated by banning U.S.-based social media companies Facebook and Twitter.

While Putin has managed to control nearly all facets of Russian society since taking charge two decades ago, political expression and non-state media reports could still be found on the internet. That access is fading, however, as Putin reacts to decisions made by TikTok, Netflix, Apple, Samsung, and Microsoft to say “dasvidania” to their business in Russia.

YouTube, which is owned by Google, blocked all Russian accounts from making money from their videos and barred Russian state television outlets from being shown across Europe. While YouTube and messaging app Telegram are still available, tech experts predict they could be the next communication apps tossed by Russian regulators.

“Russia is on course, right now, to be North Korea — that isolated,” Johnson said.

Dallas-based digital marketing and tech expert Adam Rizzieri said he agrees that by pulling American Big Tech out of Russia there is a chance that tensions could escalate.

Putin’s efforts to shut down the free press, however, have been “mostly futile,” with hackers interrupting Russian state television to share antiwar messaging and news of Russian war crimes against Ukrainians. Elon Musk has also chipped in, offering uncensored internet from space.

Rizzieri pointed out that, within hours of Russian missiles destroying Ukraine’s internet infrastructure, Musk’s Starlink service arrived on the ground within 48 hours of a Twitter request.

“Without flexing a muscle, Musk used SpaceX to easily, publicly undermine Vladimir Putin,” he said. “Musk has shown how the private sector can be used to mock and undermine global tyrants.”

But if access to the West diminishes, some fear that Russians will fall further victim to Putin’s propaganda, with no other viewpoint present than one which blames the West – and which could ultimately weaken U.S. influence.

To compensate for the missing commerce, Rizzieri said Russia will ultimately develop “government-controlled initiatives” via a “parallel market to try and offer the same goods and services that we enjoy here in the U.S.”

He points out Russia already has Vkontakte, which is essentially just a copy of Facebook.

“Typically, the quality of a knock-off is substandard and the people always find a way to get the real thing,” Rizzieri said. “Somehow, even authentic Levi jeans found their way into Soviet Russia. Socialist markets always allow for a black market to bring in more desirable goods and services.”

Johnson believes companies were forced to take an early stand on the Ukraine conflict because it was “brought into everyone’s living room” via social media.

With the Biden administration initially slow to respond to the growing threat Russia posed to Ukraine, he said multinational companies faced increasing pressure to take a stand from other European countries where they have lucrative contracts.

Rizzieri believes that Ukraine was the “deal breaker” for businesses because the American public “knows that the Biden administration’s weakness makes them directly complicit.”

With Americans seeing a “strong, fearless” leader in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy – who is “standing up to what many see as an evil, calculated Vladimir Putin” – he said there is a desire to back Zelenskyy’s example of “strong” leadership.

The voluntary corporate withdrawal from Russia is also not unprecedented. In the 1980s, 200 major companies pulled out of South Africa in protest of apartheid. At the time, the U.S. slapped South Africa with congressional sanctions.

When a company decides whether to remove itself from a market over geopolitics, Johnson said they are calculating the cost of making an exit, which is why many of the companies that pulled out of Russia still have a presence in China, which has a long track record of committing human rights abuses against its Uyghur Muslim population.

But Rizzieri said the fact that the U.S. “business and political establishment continues to protect China and other countries with questionable track records is not OK.”

“The idea that Americans are comfortable buying oil from Iran is laughable,” he said. “Eventually the private sector has to stand up to the public sector and say ‘enough is enough.'”

But considering Russia is a “basket case for business,” while China boasts one of the “strongest economies,” Johnson said it is a much easier decision for a company to cut a minor loss by leaving the Russian market than to suffer a devastating blow by exiting China.

He said the biggest test will be how companies react if China decides to invade Taiwan.

While businesses are certainly aware of the egregious human rights violations taking place in China, he said “we don’t see [the abuses]” in the same way the Russian war has infiltrated social media feeds nationwide. That is partly because China is digitally isolated from the West, which is what is now taking place in Russia as Putin clamps down.

So, while Russia inspires companies to take a stand for human rights, it’s “business as usual” for businesses with a presence in Beijing.

“The big question is, if China goes into Taiwan, will these businesses do the same then?” Johnson said. “That’s when the rubber hits the road. If China invades Taiwan and their bottom line is affected, how do they react?”

© 2022 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

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Adam Rizzieri Newsmax Russia Ukraine War

Newsmax: Big Tech Allows Russia-Ukraine Misinformation to Go Viral

Posted on | by devops
Originally published on March. 02, 2022 at Newsmax.com, Written by Marisa Herman
Big Tech has emerged as a key player for Ukraine in the country’s bid to repel Russia’s invasion, as social media feeds throughout the world are flooded with dramatic images of bombed-out buildings, heroic troops, and resilient civilians.

But Big Tech companies aren’t just promoting news and images that are sympathetic to Ukraine’s plight. The organizations also have pushed to restrict pro-Russia news sites and censor what they consider blatant misinformation about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attack.

And while the companies may have noble aims, social media experts say it’s also likely the platforms are inadvertently pushing inaccurate pro-Ukrainian propaganda that doesn’t depict the truth on the ground.

While popular social media apps such as Twitter and Facebook are based in the U.S., digital marketing expert Adam Rizzieri said the companies are effectively “no longer American” because they are “owned by international shareholders that only care about profit.”

“In the case of this Russia-Ukraine war, Big Tech has shareholders and users that represent both sides of the conflict,” he said. “So, when it comes to picking a side, they don’t choose Russia, Ukraine, or the United States. They quietly pick the side that aligns with their collective self-interest of making money.”

Rather than reveal a political or geographic bias, Rizzieri said the current conflict has exposed Big Tech’s “inability to make moral decisions related to geopolitical conflicts.”

So far, none of the U.S.-owned tech companies have banned Russian state media from using their platforms – the way in which several of them banned former President Donald Trump during his final weeks in office and beyond – and plenty of unverified pro-Ukrainian posts have gone viral, leaving users sifting through the posts appearing on their feeds to determine whether they are real or fake.

Just one week into the invasion, as social media platforms waffle over what to censor and misinformation has at times flown as fast and frequently as bullets. Andrew Selepak, a social media professor at the University of Florida, said fake or mislabeled posts and those lacking context are dangerous regardless of whether they have a pro-Russia or pro-Ukraine effect.

Because there is “no unifying voice” that “everyone is going to trust,” he said it will be difficult to understand exactly what is going on in Russia and Ukraine, especially because there is no direct U.S. involvement in the fighting.

Since it is very easy for the media to spin a good vs. evil or David vs. Goliath contest between Ukraine and Russia, Selepak said Big Tech companies are backing those portrayals. That could explain why far more pro-Ukrainian propaganda is infiltrating social media feeds – even if much of it isn’t true.

For instance, there have been multiple posts circulating that turned out to be dated or taken in other locations. Photos and videos taken during the 2014 Maidan protests in Ukraine have been recirculated on social media with claims that they depict the most recent Russian invasion, according to Reuters fact checkers.

The team found that the pics, which were posted as a collection of four images, show different scenes with a fiery backdrop. In two of the photos, people are throwing objects that are on fire. A third photo shows a man saluting with his middle finger. The last frame shows a person aiming a slingshot behind a barricade.

Similarly, footage of a military simulator video game, photos of explosions from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the Gaza Strip, dated footage of heavy weaponry firing, and even aircraft animations have been shared as if they are representative of the Russian invasion.

Unverified news stories about the conflict are also going viral on social media. Selepak chalks that up to “confirmation bias,” in which people seek out the information that they want to find.

He pointed out that the sharing of heroic stories of Ukrainian troops, even if they aren’t true, “falls into the narrative of what we believe or what we want to believe, is more likely to spread.”

“We are coming into these stories with a bias we want to believe,” he said.

Conflicting accounts have made the case of the “Snake Island soldiers” confusing. The group of 13 defenders, who were reportedly killed after telling an approaching Russian warship to “go f*** yourself” turned out to be “alive and well,” according to the Ukrainian Navy.

But the deaths of the soldiers stationed on the tiny island in the Black Sea were so believed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the 13 soldiers on Snake Island all died “heroically” by Russian bombardment. The navy now claims that soldiers repelled two attacks by Russia before surrendering “due to the lack of ammunition.”

Hype around the “Ghost of Kyiv” – an alleged Ukrainian fighter pilot who is said to have shot down as many as 10 Russian planes – is almost sure to turn out false and is likely nothing more than an urban legend.

Photos and videos shared on social media of the ace supposedly in action are likely not authentic images of a Ukrainian MiG-29 fighter pilot. One post is actually footage from a video game and not footage of a Ukrainian airman shooting down a Russian fighter jet.

And as social media platforms appear to rally behind Ukrainian efforts, it wouldn’t be the first time that Big Tech has played a role in Ukraine’s future.

Many credit tweets made by Ukrainian activists and journalists for encouraging Ukrainians to participate in the 2014 Maidan protests, which were sparked by the Ukrainian government’s decision to suspend the signing of the European Union–Ukraine Association Agreement. That decision led to closer ties with Moscow – but also soon inspired protests that ultimately led to 2014’s Revolution of Dignity.

“Seekers of truth cannot believe anything they read these days,” Rizzieri said. “They must seek information from a diversity of reliable sources and then use their best judgment accordingly.”

© 2022 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

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Twitter New CEO Parag Agrawal - Adam Rizzieri Newsmax

Newsmax: New Twitter Boss Agrawal a ‘Puppet’ for ‘Establishment Leadership’

Posted on | by devops
Originally published on Dec. 02, 2021 at Newsmax.com, Written by Marisa Herman

Many Twitter users — even some of the most vocal critics of founder and outgoing CEO Jack Dorsey — are worried about just how “free” their speech will remain once Parag Agrawal takes the helm of the microblogging behemoth.

Dorsey on Monday announced he was stepping down immediately and would be succeeded by Agrawal, the company’s chief technology officer. The news almost immediately sparked concern among social media experts who sounded alarm bells about the potential for more onerous and widespread censorship and speech crackdowns under the new regime.

“He isn’t a guy who cares about the First Amendment or the Constitution,” digital marketing expert Adam Rizzieri said.

Agrawal certainly hasn’t done himself any favors given previous statements like his Nov. 2020 boast: “Our role is not to be bound by the First Amendment … focus[ing] less on thinking about free speech, but thinking about how the times have changed.”

Agrawal, who first joined the company in 2011 as an advertising engineer, wasted no time after taking over, rolling out a new policy that almost assuredly will limit speech on the platform.

Just one day after Agrawal stepped in as the new boss, Twitter announced a ban on sharing images or videos of private individuals without their consent.

Twitter outlined the new “private information” policy in a vague — but concerning — blog post.

“When we are notified by individuals depicted, or by an authorized representative, that they did not consent to having their private image or video shared, we will remove it,” the company explained. “This policy is not applicable to media featuring public figures or individuals when media and accompanying Tweet text are shared in the public interest or add value to public discourse.”

Rizzieri swiftly speculated that the new policy potentially spells the end of the many viral memes — especially if they’re conservative — that would likely be banned from the platform under the new policy. He also worried about how the change could lead to additional censorship of important issues such as elections or public health.

“If that conversation isn’t allowed to flow freely, it’s a problem,” he said. “It’s going to make Twitter even less competitive than they already are.”

Andrew Selepak, a social media professor at the University of Florida, said the new policy announcement may actually have been timed to take some of the focus off Agrawal as he settles in.

“The timing of it takes attention off of him and puts it on the platform,” he said. “It could have been purposefully timed.”

Selepak noted that Facebook has used similar distraction tactics when in the hot seat. Whenever the media was deep into a news cycle about Facebook’s potential role in the Jan. 6 Capitol breach or privacy issues that may threaten users’ data and anonymity, he said the company has tried to change the focus.

The most recent such shift, amid a “whistleblower’s” testimony to Congress, was Facebook’s shift toward the “metaverse” — an idea of what the “new” internet would look like.

But Selepak pointed out that if the new Twitter policy is applied fairly and judiciously and can be used to prevent people from being “doxed,” or exposed maliciously, it will have “tremendous value.”

But he said questions such as “who” it will protect and “how” the policy will be used, still don’t have clear answers.

Ultimately, he said it will be Agrawal who will be the one answering why “one person is protected from being doxed and another person isn’t protected.”

Overall, Rizzieri doesn’t expect too much of a change due to the switch from Dorsey to Agrawal.

“Dorsey leaving Twitter has been a long time coming,” he said. “It’s not actually a big change here just because this CTO really is kind of Dorsey’s bobble head.”

He doesn’t foresee Agrawal bringing forth innovative ideas that will provide a better experience for users or strengthen the growth of the company from a business standpoint.

“I don’t think he will do anything positive for the company,” Rizzieri said. “I don’t see growth with its current structure.”

Considering Twitter is mostly an “echo chamber for liberal elitists” and conservatives who do use the platform already “expect to be attacked,” he doesn’t believe much will change under Agrawal’s leadership.

Rizzieri said the fact that Dorsey showered his successor with a glowing endorsement and highlighted his involvement in the company over the past decade indicates that the new face is merely a “puppet for Twitter’s establishment leadership.”

Selepak also agrees that Agrawal’s unanimous support from Twitter’s board of directors and praise from Dorsey should be “taken with a grain of salt.”

“The decision was made not to hire a business person to run the company,” he said. “The person in charge of the company is an engineer.”

He pointed out that Agrawal brings the perspective of “how can we make this platform work better?” to the table and hasn’t been forced to figure out how to make the company profitable or how to navigate a PR crisis.

“There’s going to be a lot more scrutiny on him and what he has said in the past and what decisions are made,” Selepak said.

Rizzieri also found it interesting that Twitter gave Agrawal the nod for the top job.

Typically, if a company wants to implement change and innovate, he said they tend to bring in an outside person to take charge — not someone who has been employed by the company for a decade.

With Twitter execs touting Agrawal’s involvement in “every critical decision Twitter has made,” Rizzieri said it is important to take a close look at the outcomes of those decisions.

He pointed out that Agrawal was around for the company’s decision to ban former President Donald Trump from Twitter while allowing terrorist organizations like the Taliban to have an active presence and also was a key leader when Twitter was determining what posts are considered “misinformation.”

And despite complaints of conservative voices being silenced under Dorsey’s leadership, Dorsey did openly promote free speech. When confronted by lawmakers, he was more apt to fight back on the grounds that the government should not serve as social media’s “free speech police.”

Since Agrawal hasn’t had to be the face of the company, i.e., figuring out how to market it to new users, showing consistent profitability under his leadership to shareholders, or discussing things that are “political in nature,” Rizzieri said what kind of leader he ends up becoming really “remains to be seen.”

“It is easy for him to talk big words when he isn’t in the driver’s seat,” Rizzieri said. “Now that he is, he will be responsible for what he says. His first meeting with Congress will be very telling.”

 

© 2022 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

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Facebook Rebrand to Meta - Adam Rizzieri Agency Partner in the news

CMS Wire: Facebook’s Rebranding Embraces the Metaverse, But Not Everyone is Convinced

Posted on | by devops
Originally published on Nov. 4, 2021 at CMSWire.com, Written by David Roe
During the recent Connect 2021 Facebook conference, CEO Mark Zuckerberg introduced Meta. Meta, he told, the audience, is a significant re-branding that brings together all the Facebook apps and technologies under one new company brand. The focus will be to bring the metaverse to life.

The Facebook Founder’s Letter

He also explained that the metaverse will feel like a hybrid of today’s online social experiences, sometimes expanded into three dimensions or projected into the physical world. It will let you share immersive experiences with other people even when you can’t be together.

In a Founder’s Letter he went further: “Our mission remains the same — it’s still about bringing people together. Our apps and their brands aren’t changing either. We’re still the company that designs technology around people. But all of our products, including our apps, now share a new vision, to help bring the metaverse to life. And now we have a name that reflects the breadth of what we do.”

He even pushed the metaverse ahead of the original offering that has generated a business model worth billions. From now on, the letter reads,  we will be metaverse-first, not Facebook-first. That means that over time you won’t need a Facebook account to use our other service.”

Premature Rebranding?

Is that wise though?  No sooner had the conference wrapped then major question marks started appearing in a wide range of posts and articles. Denise Lee Yohn, in the Harvard Business Review, for example, argued that the rebranding as a metaverse-first company is pre-mature at best and even foolish in its attempt to distract from the criticism the company has recently faced in the US and Europe.

“The metaverse,” she wrote, “is not well-known or understood, so it’s confusing. But the most critical issue with this rebranding is that the new brand has been introduced without any substantive change at the company. She pointed out that Zuckerberg explained that it was time to adopt a new company brand “to encompass everything we do”.

But that’s just not true, she argued. “The vision behind Meta is still just that, a vision. Facebook’s decision to rebrand is an ill-timed move.” The real problem, she added, is that Facebook is re-branding before its vision is a reality. Right now, social media remains the core of the company’s operations and revenues.

By adopting a brand name that is based on future potential capabilities and a platform and products that, by Zuckerberg’s own admission, may not be offered for a decade, the company sets itself up to confuse people at best; at worst, it will disappoint people and further degrade their trust in the company. So is the rebranding a mistake?

Adam Rizzieri, chief marketing officer, at Addison, TX-based Agency Partner Interactive agrees. He believes that the rebrand is premature and even disingenuous. Facebook’s core business is online advertising fueled by user data that it collects on its social media apps.

This business model is what allowed the company to present an incredibly strong third-quarter earnings report. Social media is exactly what they do. “Yet here we have Mark Zuckerberg trying to distance himself from the business model of social media, in favor of a hypothetical concept of an evolved internet that won’t exist for about 10 years,” he said.

The ‘Meta’ Name

Facebook as a company is more than the big blue social media platform. Facebook is also Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, Portal, and other hardware devices, Andrew Selepak at the University of Florida, told us. Changing the company name to Meta allows the company to highlight that they are more than one product or service in much the same way Google changed its name to Alphabet and Google became a subsidiary of the company along with their other properties like YouTube.

“The rebrand to Meta makes business sense especially as Zuckerberg plans to get the company to shift away from focusing on two-dimensional social media platforms to the three-dimensional environment of virtual reality,” he said.

He argues, however, that Meta is a terrible name for the Facebook rebrand. Facebook is years away from creating the virtual environment that Zuckerberg is promoting and virtual reality has been a long-overpromised idea that has never been realized.

Although Facebook does have the money, engineers, and resources to put toward creating a true virtual reality environment that is used by more than just tech enthusiasts, they are years away from completing it and even further away from it being adopted by large numbers of people.

“The Metaverse is currently science fiction rather than science reality and the name is confusing as premature,” he said. “By trying to change the media narrative of the company during a public relations nightmare after the Facebook whistleblower, maybe Metaverse as a name change is a bit appropriate with Zuckerberg as a real-life Marvel supervillain.”

Addressing Facebook’s Competition

There are other problems too, according to Chris Apaliski senior director of paid social at Austin-based performance marketing agency Adlucen. Facebook is just responding to the world around it and its own image in the wider social world. Facebook has evolved over the years.

It started from a limited platform for students to connect to each other and has now turned into a media powerhouse and one of the world’s biggest advertisers. But Facebook still faces threats from competition and needs to shake the image of being the “senior platform” of sorts — with an age demographic that gets older. Rebranding and retaining a focus on the Metaverse enable Facebook to be an early adopter in that space and once again lead the charge in social innovation.

Apaliski points out that Mark Zuckerberg has talked about being the first into the space and how he believes the metaverse can be the next evolution of the mobile web/web 3.0. He has also expressed the desire to continue to innovate in the AR/VR space, as well, including the Oculus purchase. “The metaverse is the next natural step to create structure over Facebook’s book of companies (FB, IG, WhatsApp, Oculus, etc.) similar to the approach Google wants to take with Alphabet,” he said. “A rebrand enables Facebook leadership to continue to focus on this future.

There is also significant opportunity for advertisers in the Metaverse and the digital world. “As we look toward these digital evolutions (Metaverse, NFTs, etc) the most innovative companies will get on board. Simply put — advertisers will find their way into anything,” he said.

What Kind Of Metaverse?

David ‘Ed’ Edwards is VFX product manager at motion capture leader at UK-based Vicon. He says arguments about whether, or even if, there will be a metaverse is redundant as they are already with us. However, he says the delivery timeline of a single ‘Metaverse’ will be a question of strategic benefit to its prospective creator. If one organization pins its future on this concept and wishes to capitalize on it before anyone else, it could even be unveiled within a couple of years, or even sooner.

He cites Facebook’s Oculus as a very obvious thing to focus attention on regarding the company’s ambition to pioneer the metaverse, given its significance in the history of VR (and entertainment, more broadly) and the overall nature of its acquisition by Facebook. “I can’t imagine Facebook won’t explore every opportunity available to make Oculus a central part of their metaverse experience to validate that level of investment,” he said. How significant a component it ends up being, I think will ultimately be the consumer’s decision.”

How Bright Is Meta’s Future?

The future is not all bright and there are many people that remain unconvinced about Facebook’s rebranding and the metaverse in general. Mike Davis, founder and president of the Internet Accountability Project, and organization that lobbys to make big tech companies accountable for their actions.

He says the rebranding is Facebook following in the footsteps of Big Tobacco after the industry was exposed for its toxic and deadly impact on society. Philip Morris got caught preying on kids, so they became Altria. Facebook got caught preying on kids, so they became Meta. But consumers and legislators should make no mistake: this is the same company that lies to its users, Congress and government regulators.

Facebook is also taking a page from the Google playbook when it renamed itself Alphabet to delay antitrust scrutiny and prepare for the day they were inevitably broken up. Facebook is in a crisis of its own making and renaming itself won’t stop Congress and federal law enforcement from updating and enforcing our antitrust laws, according to Davis.

Final Thoughts

Many people in the market have yet to come to terms with Facebook’s business model. Arguably, this is why it has been so difficult for lawmakers to adequately regulate the industry and address privacy concerns. “To ask the market to now conceptualize a real-life version of The Matrix is completely unrealistic,” Rizzieri added. “For those who don’t get the business model, they are now more confused and increasingly apathetic to big tech’s dominance. For those who understand the model, the idea of a Facebook-controlled metaverse should be scarier than the latest Halloween movie.

© 2021 CMS Wire. All rights reserved.

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agency-partner-adam-rizzieri-on-cw33tv-social-media-safety

Nexstar Media: “Morning After” on CW33 TV To Discuss Social Media Safety

Posted on | by devops
Originally aired live on Nov. 3, 2021, on CW33 TV; by the Digital News Desk
DALLAS (KDAF) — More than 7,000 CEOs have been impersonated by scammers since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.That alarming statistic hits home for many others across the world as the FTC says they measured about 500,000 imposter scams since 2020.

This problem is now affecting our very own Jenny Anchondo as she battles with social media accounts pretending to be her and scamming people out of hundreds of dollars.

Adam Rizzieri, co-founder and chief marketing officer for Agency Partner Interactive, joined our show to talk about the dangers of social media impersonation and what you can do to prevent it.

 

 

© 2021 Nexstar Media Inc. and Agency Partner Interactive LLC. All rights reserved.

Other Resources

Learn more about “imposter scams” today. These are a growing threat and have increased in frequency since the COVID mandates. Individuals and businesses alike are targets and the FTC has proven to be a great resource on this topic.

Click Here to learn more from the FTC’s official website.

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facebook-metaverse

Newsmax: Facebook Forging Forward With Zuckerberg’s ‘Metaverse’

Posted on | by devops
Originally published on Oct. 21, 2021 at Newsmax.com, Written by Marisa Herman

It has only been a few months since Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg teased the possibility of transforming the powerful social media company into an immersive “metaverse” — and the big tech billionaire isn’t wasting any time creating his unprecedented virtual reality world.

Despite months of high-profile problems — including allegations from whistleblowers, lawmakers calling for more regulation, and numerous lawsuits — Facebook announced plans to hire 10,000 highly skilled workers from Europe during the next five years to develop its metaverse. The social media behemoth is also rumored to be announcing a company name change in the coming days to reflect its new focus.

As imagined, a metaverse is a Matrix-like, virtual form of reality where users are immersed in the internet, rather  than looking at it from the outside. The term was coined nearly 30 years ago in the 1992 dystopian novel “Snow Crash,” and elements of the futuristic metaverse have already debuted in popular video games such as Fortnight and Roblox.

Techies view the metaverse as the internet’s next frontier to be conquered and Facebook appears to be moving quickly toward completing its quest to become the first major tech company to take the plunge, offering the masses a space that combines the physical world with an augmented virtual existence.

Chris Haynes, a political science professor at the University of New Haven, said Zuckerberg’s hiring spree shouldn’t come as much of a surprise because Facebook has been looking into a pivot towards the untapped metaverse for some time.

Facebook has said that this new virtual reality is the next generation of Facebook as opposed to [it] just being a social media company.

“This is something that has been a real buzz in the tech world, especially with the COVID pandemic and the inability for people to get out there and interact,” Haynes said. “Facebook has said that this new virtual reality is the next generation of Facebook as opposed to [it] just being a social media company.”

Back in 2014, Facebook spent $2 billion to purchase Oculus, a company behind virtual reality gaming headsets. Since then, the tech giant has invested more money and manpower in developing the next phase of tech, positioning the company to shift away from tools like messenger and toward services like virtual boardroom meetings.

A few months ago, Facebook rolled out Horizon Workrooms, an app that allows users wearing VR headsets to gather in boardroom-style meetings with cartoon avatars of their co-workers. The app is reported to be part of Facebook’s secret “Horizon” project, which, according to The Verge, is an unreleased VR version of Facebook.

This summer, Zuckerberg shared his vision for the metaverse, which he dubbed “an embodied internet,” on “The Vergecast” podcast.

He said the metaverse will be a “big focus” for Facebook and a “big part of the next chapter for the way that the internet evolves after the mobile internet.”

Haynes said the timing of the jobs announcement, however, is no coincidence and comes as Zuckerberg is “attempting to change the narrative and reframe the public image of the company and himself.”

“[Facebook] recognizes that they have done a lot of damage,” he said. “One way of shifting the narrative of the news media is to focus on something that is more beneficial.”

Haynes said given the fact that Facebook hasn’t always been completely transparent with its users and the government, the company is betting its public perception will get a boost by touting the benefits the metaverse will bring.

He said the calculus behind the metaverse push is that if there is public buy in for it, the government will back off.

Currently, Facebook is taking heat from users and elected officials on both sides of the political aisle. It has been blasted by lawmakers on the left for not doing enough to manage alleged misinformation posted to the social platform. It’s also been slammed by conservatives who feel the company suppresses the voices of those who lean to the right, including former President Donald Trump. The company is facing a barrage of lawsuits ranging from privacy issues to antitrust concerns, too.

Dallas-based marketing and big tech expert Adam Rizzieri said that, on one hand, Facebook should clean up the mess it faces in the U.S. before it jets across the world to start its new endeavor. He noted the irony in Facebook’s talk about consolidating and strengthening what it has already built even as it builds the metaverse — all while Congress is trying to reel the company in.

But he isn’t surprised to see Zuckerberg brush off the criticism he faces at home for a fresh start elsewhere because “Facebook sees the world as its house” more than it views itself as an American company.

“Anyone who is watching knows that issues within Facebook’s walls are yet to be resolved,” he said. “The focus on the rebrand is an interesting way of ignoring problems that still exist.”

He said Zuckerberg’s move into the metaverse showcases the “power that the company continues to wield” and its desire to “control the future and their destiny in it.”

“Today we are concerned about big tech unfairly wielding its power in our daily online interactions,” he said. “Tomorrow, with the metaverse, we have to be concerned about big tech doing the same in a world that has no boundaries.”

As the physical and virtual worlds become more intertwined, he questions where we will “draw the line of separation between what’s mine and what’s ours?

 

© 2021 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

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google-ad-ban

Newsmax: Google’s Ad Ban on Climate Skeptics Is About Politics, Not Environment

Posted on | by devops
Originally published on Newsmax.com, Written by Marisa Herman
Google says skeptics of what the company determines to be “scientific consensus” about climate change will be prevented from making money or spreading so-called “misinformation” on YouTube, a major decision that tech experts say is motivated more by politics than sincere environmental concerns.

The tech behemoth announced the policy change in a Thursday blog post that noted the change will “prohibit ads for, and monetization of, content that contradicts well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change,” and is slated to affect YouTube video creators, advertisers, and publishers.

Critics immediately questioned whether the move was yet another example of a big tech company working in lockstep with the Democratic Party’s agenda to silence those who have the “wrong” thoughts about a debatable issue.

Steve Milloy, a former Trump EPA transition member and the founder of JunkScience.com, said the forthcoming policy “does nothing but validate what climate realists have been saying for years: It’s not about the climate; it’s about the political power.”

“If what we were saying was wrong, we would have been laughed off the Internet long ago,” he said. “Instead, reality is validating us and public support for climate idiocy is going nowhere.”

The new Google policy applies to any content that it determines calls climate change a hoax or denies that greenhouse gas emissions and human activity have contributed to the overall warming of the earth.

Google’s ad team said a “growing number” of its “advertising and publisher partners” have expressed concerns in recent years about “ads that run alongside or promote inaccurate claims about climate change.”

The company says that advertisers don’t want their ads showing up next to content that denies climate change, and publishers and creators don’t want the content to appear on their pages or videos.

Milloy believes the change, which is set to go into effect in November, will “have no effect on climate realist websites for the simple reason that the ad revenue is pretty trivial.”

I don’t know of any climate realist who blogs for the Google ad revenue…

“I don’t know of any climate realist who blogs for the Google ad revenue,” he said. “We do it because we oppose the abuse of science, especially as it is being used to advance totalitarianism.”

Google said it will use a mix of both automated tools and human reviewers to enforce the policy. It says it will “look carefully at the context in which claims are made, differentiating between content that states a false claim as fact, versus content that reports on or discusses that claim” when it evaluates content.

While Google may be responding to pressure from climate activists to “do more,” critics say the policy is another reason why the publisher shouldn’t be protected by Sec. 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a controversial protection afforded to tech companies that shields them from being sued over content that users post on their site.

Marketing and big tech expert Adam Rizzieri called the new policy “par for the course” when it comes to tech organizations protecting the speech of the “elite, VIP class of users, while rapidly silencing and de-platforming all others.”

“Google routinely allows politically divisive issues to dictate how its platforms operate and what its users can do and say,” Rizzieri said. “Unlike private companies, Google wields the de facto power of a government entity and therefore abuses its power in how it actively silences the free speech of users, spanning from daily users to renowned thought leaders.”

When it comes to YouTube, he said the video platform has already “routinely demonetized or suspended credentialed, industry experts” on other topics.

“They target your average YouTube user, but they also go after thought leaders – including Nobel Prize winners and actual history makers,” he said. “When YouTube’s enforcement teams believe themselves to know more than Nobel Prize winners and legal thought leaders like Alan Dershowitz, we have a big problem.”

When YouTube’s enforcement teams believe themselves to know more than Nobel Prize winners and legal thought leaders like Alan Dershowitz, we have a big problem.

Because policies like these “actively violate the First Amendment rights of everyone,” Rizzieri said big tech companies “should not get to enjoy Section 230 immunities.”

James Taylor, the president of the Illinois-based thinktank The Heartland Institute, says concerns about actions like those taken by Google have led 33 states to push legislation in a bid to combat censorship and free speech concerns. Florida and Texas have already had two of those bills signed into law.

“Google and Big Tech are perpetrating Digital Age book-burning,” Taylor said, adding, “It is now The People versus Big Tech — and they brought it upon themselves.”

Milloy added, “Google’s demonetization is an admission that we are winning, a treasure far more valuable than Google ad revenue.”

© 2021 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

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Agency Partner’s award-winning team often contributes expert opinions and perspectives on things that matter. Follow our contributions to the latest news and media topics or head over to the newly reinstated/uncancelled Agency Partner YouTube page to see us on TV and hear us on the radio or podcasts.

If your business is looking to utilize a digital marketing strategy or perhaps you need help with your web design and mobile needs, we’re happy to help! For no risk and no obligation, give us a shot!

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