New World Notes

Survey of Top Tech Company Staff: Facebook Not Doing Enough to Prevent Election Disinfo & Hate Speech -- But Most Facebook Staffers Insist Otherwise

With less than a month before the next U.S. Presidential election, here's new survey results from the development team of Blind, an anonymous messaging/virtual community app for company staffers that's especially popular at large tech firms.

This one asked a question that's been the subject of constant press coverage since the 2016 election: Is Facebook doing enough to prevent the spread of misinformation and hate speech on its platform related to the 2020 election?

With nearly 1600 responses, most from team members at major technology companies, here are the results (right):

By overwhelming numbers ranging in percentages from the mid 60s to the mid 80s, staff at Microsoft, Apple, Cisco, and other tech firms believe Facebook is not doing enough. Notably, staff at several of these companies -- LinkedIn, Google (thorough YouTube), and Amazon (through its customer reviews section) -- deal with preventing misinformation and hate speech on their own platform, and presumably have better than average knowledge to evaluable Facebook's efforts thus far.  

Contrast that with the response of Facebook staff themselves:

71% of respondents answered that the social network is doing enough to combat election period hate speech/misinformation. (Still, it is notable that nearly 1 in 3 of Facebook staff surveyed believe they could do more.)

Launched last week, the Blind survey ran until yesterday -- when as it happened, Facebook removed a post by Trump falsely claiming that the flu is more dangerous than COVID-19.

You can read more details on Blind's company blog -- including results on a related question: On whether (as has been reported by Bloomberg and other outlets) Facebook's policies and algorithms are designed to support Trump and other right wing political figures. Answer:

In Biden vs. Trump Survey, Staff at Top Tech Companies Less Liberal Than Often Assumed

I recently received interesting new survey results from the development team of Blind, an anonymous messaging app for company staffers. When employees at top tech companies were anonymously asked whether they supported Trump or Biden in the upcoming election, the results were often more evenly split than Silicon Valley's reputation as a liberal bastion might suggest.

Here's the results from over 6000 respondents, divided according to their company affiliation:

Ready Player One Sequel Coming At a Time When Hundreds of Millions Already Live in OASIS-Like Virtual Worlds

Pictured: Aech's hangout from Ready Player One recreated in Second Life with Ernest Cline's blessing

Well this seems inevitable and comes at the strangest possible time:

Ready Player One author Ernest Cline is stepping back into the Oasis, with his long-gestating sequel Ready Player Two launching Nov. 24 in North America. Ready Player One, released in 2011, was a big hit in the publishing world, reaching No. 1 and spending more than 100 weeks on the New York Times bestsellers list... It takes place in 2045, a time in which climate change, overpopulation and poverty have swept the Earth. Much of humanity seeks solace in an online virtual reality called The Oasis, created by 1980s-obsessed genius James Halliday. The plot sees teenager Wade Watts dedicate himself to solving Anorak’s Game, an Oasis-spanning treasure hunt announced after Halliday's death and which sees the winner get his $500 billion fortune, as well as control of The Oasis.

But so much has changed since the first book was published in 2011 -- only a year after Minecraft was published, but many years before Minecraft became a virtual world phenomenon with 200 million owners as of last May. And Roblox (as of 2019), attracted 100 million citizens of its own. And Fortnite (also as of last May), announced 350 million players, as the battle royale game quickly evolved into an open platform virtual world.

So while VR headsets may still be a niche, the second book about the OASIS will appear at a time when the OASIS more or less already exists.

How to Have Great Virtual Meetings -- Valuable Advice from Acclaimed Virtual World UX Designer Jeff "AM Radio" Berg

Jeff Berg, a Webby Award winning designer, has a thoughtful and valuable Medium post on the etiquette of virtual meetings, especially the kind many of us in the quarantine age now have every day on video conferencing systems like Zoom. Berg brings his long experience as a UX designer to bear on what is, for most (all?) of us, an incredibly awkward and frustrating way of having meetings. With the web camera on, we feel like we're onstage, artificially emoting for an audience, but Berg says what we're really doing is grasping at a new kind of etiquette:

For virtual meeting spaces, acknowledging, understanding, and practicing new etiquette is not a wasteful formality, but is a formalization for defining space, rules of engagement, and a process for progressing discourse. There is nothing fake about utilizing the tool-sets we have available to us for optimizing communication. Being aware of your physical self in a virtual space as seen by others in that virtual space will maximize your experience and your own benefits from the interactions you have.

Key to Berg's experience with UX design, as longtime readers will know, is once creating masterpiece works of immersive art in Second Life under his avatar name, AM Radio. These art installations -- quiet, nostalgic, meditative -- tended to attract positive, impromptu conversations around them. Jeff tells me his experience as AM Radio was integral to the advice he's offering for virtual meetings now:

Zoom Website Traffic Jumps 15% Since Coronavirus Outbreak, Social VR Usage So Far Seems Flat

It's news that probably won't surprise the many millions now working from home since the last few weeks, but here it is: Traffic to the website of Zoom, the remote conferencing services company, has strongly jumped since the end of January, when the WHO first declared the Coronavirus to be an international health concern. According to SimilarWeb, traffic jumped to about 14 million visits total at the end of February, representing 15% in growth. Curiously, the competing service Skype has seen a slight decline in web traffic over the same time. My interpretation: Since Skype is a much older service (founded in 2003, versus Zoom in 2011), most active Internet users already have Skype, and are visiting Zoom for the first time to download the client as they prepare to do remote work.

At New World Notes, we've been wondering if we'd also see a rise in online virtual world/social VR activity. But so far, not so much. Take a look:

In Case You Missed It, Apple Has a Streaming Comedy Series About Making an MMO Featuring Rob McElhenney, Office Zaniness, Virtual Peen

I missed the debut a few weeks ago but Mythic Quest: Raven's Banquet (available on Apple TV here) is co-created and stars  It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s Rob McElhenney, who leads the development team behind the world's largest MMO, and to judge by the teaser, brings the same zany, genial a-hole energy to this series. (And the unexpected, mostly undesired appearance of virtual peen suggests McElhenney did his research.) Polygon was somewhat positive on the MMO side of things:

Snowcrash Set to Become HBO Max Streaming Series, Will Ironically Compete With Actual Metaverses for Viewers

After nearly three (!) decades of false starts  -- I'm old enough to remember when the director of Demolition Man was once attached to make it --  it looks like a filmed adaption of Snow Crash is finally taking shape:

Neal Stephenson's influential Snow Crash is finally poised to reach screens, although you'll have to be picky about where you watch it. HBO Max has ordered work on a TV series adaptation of the sci-fi novel that will be written and co-run by the Scott Pilgrim movie's Michael Bacall, and directed by Attack the Block's Joe Cornish. The L Word's Angela Robinson will run the show alongside Bacall.

So "filmed", but not as a movie, and rather for a series to be streamed on the Internet. But given that cash-flush HBO is involved, this is the version most likely to finally make it to the screen. Which is ironic timing for several reasons, including:

Watch: Love the Premise of Free Guy, Where Ryan Reynolds is an NPC in an MMO -- Just Not Sure the Filmmakers Get MMOs

Spielberg's Ready Player One was not a huge hit here -- though notably, a blockbuster in China, where MMOs are much more mainstream -- but here's Ryan Reynolds in Free Guy, Hollywood's latest attempt to turn the dynamics of virtual worlds into a mass market movie. Premise:

In the open world video game Free City, an amalgamation of Grand Theft Auto and Fortnite, Guy (Reynolds) is a non-player character (NPC), working as a bank teller. Thanks to a code developed by programmers Milly (Comer) and Keys (Keery) inserted into Free City by the publisher Antoine (Waititi), Guy becomes aware of his world being a video game, and takes steps to make himself the hero, creating a race against time to save the game before the developers can shut it down.

That sounds good as far as it goes, though as with Ready Player One, all the onscreen action has a flat, forced feel. Here's why: 

Twitter Employees Strongly Support Ban on Political Ads & Want Facebook to Follow Suit, While Facebook Employees Think Otherwise - Blind Survey

Last week Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced a policy to no longer run political ads on his social network, and according to a survey on Blind, the anonymous messaging app for tech employees, this shift has very strong support among his staff. Not only do 85% support it, a solid majority of 56% say the policy will have a positive effect on the 2020 election. Perhaps even more notably, 82% of Twitter employees who took the survey say Facebook should adopt a similar policy.

This is in striking contrast to a Blind survey conducted last month directed at Facebook employees, and its policy of allowing deceptive or inaccurate political ads: 51% of Facebook staff who took the survey said this policy might change the 2020 election, and only 54% supported having the policy in the first place. This strongly suggests less internal confidence within the Facebook ranks.

However, there's another surprise from this new survey, when Facebook employees were asked about Twitter's new policy:

Who Wants a Silicon Valley Watch Party on New World Notes?

After a long, miserable wait, the trailer to the final season of HBO's scabrously funny Silicon Valley is here.  (NSFW warning: Very HBO dialog.) Whereas previous seasons focused on VR, looks like this upcoming season will hit on at least a few New World Notes-friendly themes, including:

• Real world advertising in virtual worlds.
• Unexpected spin-offs of Burning Man.
• Dick-punching Big Tech.

Anyone else a fan? Seriously thinking of hosting a watch party post/recap for every episode.