Author: Ariel

WSWS: Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior, Unethical Journalism, Fundraising Fraud

Andre Damon, the Technology reporter for World Socialist WebSite that doesn’t understand how Technology or the Internet works, spreading misinformation about censorship via RT America.

Andre Damon’s reporting is good at placing pieces of information together to show a picture.

But since his reporting reflects fundamental misunderstandings of how the technology which underlies a variety of internet services functions, however, this puzzle is not held together because the pieces fit into a coherent narrative. It looks as it does because Andre Damon, who two decades ago would have been considered unqualified and unfit by any newsroom with rigorous professional standards to get published about the topics on which he speaks, has taken a hammer to the edges of curated facts in order to make an image that fits his prejudices.

While he claims to be informing his audience, readers of his articles and viewers of his live and video appearances wherein he speaks about issues related to social media, democracy, and censorship end up misinformed rather than informed.

Andre Damon is committed to propagating a false narrative via his readers at WSWS, but also via his role as the National Secretary (US) of the International Youth and Students for Social Equality.

Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior: Fake Friends

An example of the many sock puppet accounts that like WSWS’ Facebook page.

Curiosity, not virtue-seeking, is the true root of journalism.

When TeleSUR went down the second time, I decided to investigate why and the answer is found in my article. Kultural Marxism: Digital Evidence of Venezuela’s Attempt to Influence American Elections. As I write about in more detail there, WSWS is one of several “alternative news” sites – such as TeleSUR, Venezeula Analysis, RT, Mint Press News, CounterPunch, GeoPolitics Alert, GlobalResearch.ca – that are part of a large network designed to artificially inflate their engagement to boost ranking on the Facebook algorithm.

I sent an email to Andre Damon sharing my findings with them and asking to speak with the person in charge of their digital marketing, but  – they never responded and as you can see from the image above – the coordinated inauthentic behavior continued.

Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior: Fake Backlinks

Examples of backlinks devalued by Google following their last algorithmic change: Links from foreign blogs (especially Russian) and anti-semitic websites like Jew Watch. Source- Ahrefs, March 12th 2019

The extent of black hat backlinking by WSWS is so extensive – you can use any limited use SEO tool to get a view of just how much junk links are posted on a variety of websites.

Unethical Journalism

Andre Damon claims in the article the Socialism and the struggle against Internet Censorship that an increase in visits to the website translates to a “growing influence.” This, however, is not a sign of influence and reflects that same kind of poor managerial thinking that lead Pablo Vivanco of TeleSUR English to think that “1000% increase in outreach” is a positive indicator! Sorry to put ya’lls ignorance on blast, guys, but in this digital, social media age so if you get rank for reasons that stank the stench has a tendency to get aired, no?

So what do I mean by increase in visists doesn’t translate to growing influence?

I could individually go to my own webpage and click refresh many times over.

I could hire a click farm to engage with my content.

I could contract a digital media specialist to build a number of aggregate blogs and fake facebook groups and accounts to increase my search term ranking for keywords – as I documented that WSWS and others did – to raise the number of hits to my website but depending on other factors this nor none of the above signifies a growing influence!

What would is the number of visitors that continued along their ideological “buyer’s journey”. In this case it is questions like the following which really matter: How many new people signed up to be new members? How many purchased literature from the website? How were bounce stats affected? What’s the average amount of time people stayed on the website?

Zero Hedge, which was recently banned from Facebook, promotes a number of WSWS articles.

The lack of reportage on this indicates that for all the crowing about censorship, the numbers of people that go from the consumer of WSWS reports to party members or even just a customer of the party is very low.

While knowing this is technically “specialized knowledge” it in no way was kept secret from Andre Damon either – it just required curiousity.

One could read the documentation provided by Google.

One could review the white papers and blogs of digital marketing companies.

One could learn about the issues one is talking about beforehand and thus prevent oneself from writing a series of articles that ought to be viewed now as genuinely embarrassing by the WSWS and cause for new editorial guidelines.

But Andre Damon hasn’t done any of this, and thus his reporting illustrates his lack of technical comprehension of basic concepts related to the digital world. The people that he interviews, additionally, all feed into this as well.

Let’s get specific.

In an article on the WSWS website titled “Facebook security officer- not all speech is created equal,” another allusion to George Orwell, we see another example of Andre Damon’s ignorance of basic tenants of journalism as well as the digital media infrastructure underpinning the internet webpages.

Why? Because with the slightest modicum of scrutiny the Orwellian analogy shows itself to be absurd.

There is a substantive difference between an article that includes an author name, that is published under the banner of a journalistic enterprise, that has been properly vetted by professional editors, that has references to sources included or made available to those that request it and an anonymous blog article posted on a recently purchased domain connected to an automated RSS feed that just posts links to networked news outlets.

Damon, in essence, is arguing against the kind of professional standards in journalism that would normally keep him from speaking about this issue in the first place.

This isn’t even the full extent of the disinformation Andre Damon shares, he also misinterprets other people’s statements to fit his worldview.

In Our Crime was Telling the Truth, when Damon states that “According to Stamos and Kristof, the major newspapers should have simply censored themselves and refused to cover WikiLeaks’ revelations.” he is again taking the quote out of context. Stamos is putting the responsibility for the issues being addressed onto the news outlets that published information in the first place. Stamos is saying that Facebook would have had to play content censor with a large number of major news outlets – which they didn’t want to do – were certain items of information to have been kept from the public. Thus we see hear that Andre Damon is crying censorship in a case wherein a spokesperson for Facebook is explicitly stating that the company did not see it as their responsibility to censor something.

Fundraising Fraud

What the above means in the context of WSWS’s fundraising efforts is that they are committing fraud.

Considering they are partners with TeleSUR – and that I’ve already shown how TeleSUR has committed Fundraising Fraud – this shouldn’t be that shocking. What is shocking is that not a single person decided to do any fact checking related to what was being said in advance.

The only reason that Chris Hedges, following the line of Andre Damon, is able to describe these websites as being targeted “because they find these critiques to be dangerous” is because he fundamentally doesn’t understand what’s going on in the back end.

When David North describes the problem of the Left: “The basic problem is not absence of courage, it’s not an absence of a desire to fight, it is an absence of understanding.” and states that, “Our challenge is to provide an increasingly insurgent world movement of the working class with the ideas and the program which it needs to understand the political situation which it confronts.” We see here an example of Orwellian irony because he clearly isn’t familiar with how technology operates!

Why Lie? To Scare Up Donations and to Increase the Paranoid Style in American Politics

Chris Hedges on RT “outing” Wikipedia as a tool of imperialism rather than that of lazy students. Given that TeleSUR has people working full time to incorporate their content as sources and to write articles in Spanish highlighting the accomplishments of politicians who have collaborated with the PSUV – this is another example of Orwellian Irony.

One issue with this type of false news reporting is that it perpetuates a narrative based on ignorance that fits into the geopolitical goals of foreign nationals – specifically Venezuela and Russia.

If people are afraid over things they shouldn’t be and they believe that unconstitutional things are happening when they aren’t it exacerbates perceptions of political polarization and loss of confidence in the government. Which is not to say that news which leads to that *should* be censored, but that fake conspiracies like the one which WSWS, Andre Damon, Chris Hedges, David North and all of the other members of this network should not be able to be classified as news on social media.

If they can’t make the effort to inform themselves before they seek to inform others; if they can’t make the effort to fact check themselves after someone like myself has contacted them; if they raise money for a fraudulent basis that’s connected to these networks – these people aren’t journalists, but foreign propagandists.

Notes on Strategic Management of Technological Innovation

I had a feeling that my fellow New York University Alumnus Mellissa A. Schilling would produce a worthy written work explaining the technical language used within the Innovation and Technology Management field, a discipline I’m now studying at Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana in Medellin, Colombia.

The case studies included covers a wide variety of topics. Innovation and strategy in high technology industries such as smartphones, videogames, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, electric vehicles, and renewable energies. All interspersed with comments on issues related to platform dynamics, networks, creativity, and breakthrough innovation.

I made the below notes for myself, and highly encourage those also in this field to also purchase her book.

absorptive capacity
The ability of an organization to recognize, assim- ilate, and utilize new knowledge. 

whereby as firms accumulate knowledge, they also increase their future ability to assimi- late information. A firm’s prior related experience shapes its ability to recognize the value of new information, and to utilize that information effectively. 

This knowledge base enables the firm to more rapidly assess the value of related new materials, technologies, and methods. The effects of absorptive capacity suggest that firms that develop new technologies ahead of others may have an advantage in staying ahead. 

network externalities Also termed posi- tive consumption externalities, this is when the value of a good to a user increases with the number of other users of the same or simi- lar good. 

installed base The number of users of a particular good. For instance, the installed base of a particular video game console refers to the number of those consoles that are installed in homes worldwide. 

complementary goods Additional goods and services that enable or enhance the value of another good. For example, the value of a video game console is directly related to the availability of complementary goods such as video games, periph- eral devices, and services such as online gaming. 

path dependency When end results depend greatly on the events that took place leading up to the outcome. It is often impossible to reproduce the results that occur in such a situation. 

Firms will tend to use and build on their existing knowledge base rather than enter unfamiliar areas.

This can result in a very “sticky” technological paradigm that directs future technological inquiry in the area.

Thus, a dominant design is likely to influence the nature of the technological discontinuity that will eventually replace it. 

Increasing returns
When the rate of return (not just gross returns) from a product or process increases with the size of its installed base. 

Technologically superior products do not always win—the firms that win are usually the ones that know how to manage the multiple dimensions of value that shape design selection. 

Buyer Utility Map

It is important to consider six different utility levers, as well as six stages of the buyer experience cycle, to understand a new technol- ogy’s utility to a buyer. 

The stages they identify are purchase, delivery, use, supplements, maintenance, and disposal. The six utility levers they consider are customer productivity, simplicity, convenience, risk, fun and image, and environmental friendliness. Creating a grid with stages and levers yields a 36-cell utility map. Each cell provides an opportunity to offer a new value proposition to a customer. 

For example, instead of having a single entry for customer productivity, the map could have rows for several dimensions of productiv- ity such as speed, efficiency, scalability, and reliability. The map provides a guide for managers to consider multiple dimensions of technological value and multiple stages of the customer experience. 

Even if a new innovation has a significant advantage in functionality, its overall value may be significantly less than the incum- bent standard. 

For the new technology to compete on its stand-alone util- ity alone, that utility must be so great that it eclipses the combined value of an existing technology’s stand-alone utility, its installed base, and its complementary goods. 

When users are comparing the value of a new technology to an existing technology, they are weighing a combination of objective information (e.g., actual technological benefits, actual information on installed base or complementary goods), subjec- tive information (e.g., perceived technological benefits, perceived installed base or complementary goods), and expectations for the future (e.g., anticipated technological benefits, anticipated installed base and complementary goods). Thus, each of the primary value components described above also has corresponding perceived or anticipated value components 

“vaporware”—products that are not actually on the market and may not even exist but are advertised—by many software vendors. By building the impression among customers that a product is ubiquitous, firms can prompt rapid adoption of the product when it actually is available. Vaporware may also buy a firm valuable time in bringing its product to market. If other vendors beat the firm to market and the firm fears that customers may select a dominant design before its offering is introduced, it can use vaporware to attempt to persuade custom- ers to delay purchase until the firm’s product is available. 

first movers the first entrants to sell in a new product or ser- vice category. 

early followers Entrants that are early to market, but not first. 

late entrants Entrants that do not enter the market until the time the product begins to penetrate the mass market or later. 

in an industry characterized by increasing returns to adoption, there can be powerful advantages to being an early provider; a technol- ogy that is adopted early may rise in market power through self-reinforcing positive feedback mechanisms, culminating in its entrenchment as a dominant design. 

First movers typically bear the bulk of the research and development expenses for their product or service technologies, and they must also often pay to develop suppliers and distribution channels, plus consumer awareness. 

incumbent inertia – The tendency for incumbents to be slow to respond to changes in the industry environ- ment due to their large size, established routines, or prior strategic commitments to existing suppliers and customers. 

enabling technologies Component technologies that are necessary for the performance or desirability of a given innovation. 

How does a firm decide whether to attempt to pioneer a technology category or to wait while others do so? The answer will depend on several factors, including customer certainty, the margin of improvement offered by the new technology, the state of enabling technologies and complementary goods, the threat of competitive entry, the degree to which the industry exhibits increasing returns, and the firm’s resources. 

parallel development process When multiple stages of the new product  development process occur simultaneously. 

oligopolistic industries Highly consoli- dated industries with a few large competitors. 

exit barriers Costs or other commitments that make it difficult for firms to abandon an industry (large fixed-asset investments, emotional commitment to the industry, etc.). 

entry barriers Conditions that make it difficult or expensive for new firms to enter an industry (government regulation, large start-up costs, etc.). 

switching costs Factors that make it difficult or expensive to change suppliers or buyers, such as investments in specialized assets to work with a particular supplier or buyer. 

vertical integration Getting into
the business of one’s suppliers (backward vertical integration) or one’s buyers (forward vertical integration). For example, a firm that begins producing its own supplies has practiced backward vertical integration, and a firm that buys its distributor has practiced forward vertical integration. 

complements  Products or services that enhance the usefulness
or desirability of another product. 

stakeholder Any entity that has an interest (“stake”) in the organization. 

A strategic stakeholder analysis emphasizes the stakeholder management issues that are likely to impact the firm’s financial performance, while a normative stakeholder analysis emphasizes the stakeholder management issues the firm ought to attend to due to their ethical or moral implications. 

In Michael Porter’s model of a value chain, activities are divided into primary activities and support activities. Primary activities include inbound logistics (all activities required to receive, store, and disseminate inputs), operations (activities involved in the transformation of inputs into outputs), outbound logistics (activities required to collect, store, and distribute outputs), marketing and sales (activities to inform buyers about products and services and to induce their purchase), and service (after-sales activities required to keep the product or service working effectively). Support activities include procurement (the acquisition of inputs, but not their physical transfer, as that would be covered in inbound logistics), human resource management (activities such as recruiting, hiring, training, and compensating personnel), technology development (activities involved in developing and managing equipment, hardware, software, procedures, and knowledge necessary to transform inputs into outputs), and infrastructure (functions such as accounting, le- gal counsel, finance, planning, public affairs, government relations, quality assurance, and general management necessary to ensure smooth functioning of the firm). 

tacit resources – Resources of an intangible nature (such as knowl- edge) that cannot be readily codified. 

socially complex resources Resources or activities that emerge through the interaction of multiple individuals. 

causal ambiguity The relationship between a resource and the outcome it produces is poorly understood
(the causal mechanism is ambiguous). 

core competencies (or core capabilities) A set of integrated and harmonized abilities that distinguish the firm in the marketplace. 

By viewing the business as a portfolio of core competencies, managers are better able to focus on value creation and meaningful new business development, rather than cost cutting or opportunistic expansion. 

Sometimes the very things that a firm excels at can enslave it, making the firm rigid and overly committed to inappropriate skills and resources. 

While these systems and norms can prove beneficial in reinforcing and leveraging the firm’s existing core competencies, they can also inhibit the development of new core competencies. For example, a firm’s emphasis on a scientific discipline that is central to its core competency can make the firm less attractive to individuals from other disciplines. Rewards for engaging in core competency activities can discourage employees from pursuing more exploratory activities. 

dynamic capabilities A set of abilities that make a firm more agile and responsive to change. 

Strategic intent is to create value, which entails more than just improving operations or cutting costs; it means leveraging corporate resources to create more performance for customers, more well-being for employees, and more returns for shareholders. A company’s strategic intent is a long-term goal that is ambitious, builds upon and stretches the firm’s existing core competencies, and draws from all levels of the orga- nization. 

Successful and innovative firms question existing price-performance assumptions. They lead customers by developing and introducing products that extend well beyond current market requirements and help mold the market’s expectations for the future. 

The balanced scorecard is a measurement system that encourages the firm to consider its goals from multiple perspectives (financial, customer, business process, and innovation and learning), and establish measures that correspond to each of those perspectives. 

The Pareto principle refers to the fact that many events (such as a customer choosing a particular book) have a power law distribution, meaning that 20 percent of the books, shows, or songs attract 80 percent of the business. 

capital rationing – the allocation of a finite quantity of resources over different possible uses. 

R&D intensity – The ratio of R&D expendi- tures to sales. 

net present value (NPV) The discounted cash inflows of a project minus the discounted cash outflows. 

internal rate of return (IRR) The rate of return yielded by a project, nor- mally calculated as the discount rate that makes the net present value of an investment equal zero. 

discounted payback period
The time required to break even on a project using discounted cash flows. 

The internal rate of return of a project is the discount rate that makes the net present value of the investment zero. Managers can compare this rate of return to their required return to decide if the investment should be made. 

discounted cash flow estimates are only as accurate as the original estimates of the profits from the technology, and in many situations it is extremely difficult to antici- pate the returns of the technology… such methods discriminate heavily against projects that are long term or risky, and the methods may fail to capture the strategic importance of the investment decision. Technology development projects play a crucial role in building and leveraging firm capabilities, and creating options for the future. Investments in new core technologies are investments in the organization’s capabilities and learning, and they create opportunities for the firm that might other- wise be unavailable.1 Thus, standard discounted cash flow analysis has the potential to severely undervalue a development project’s contribution to the firm. 

To better incorporate strategic implications in the new product development investment decision, some managers and scholars have recently begun promoting the idea of treating new product development decisions as real options 

real options 

The applica- tion of stock option valua- tion methods to investments in nonfinancial assets. 

  • The cost of the R&D program can be considered the price of a call option. 
  • The cost of future investment required to capitalize on the R&D program (such as the cost of commercializing a new technology that is developed) can be considered the exercise price. 
  • The returns to the R&D investment are analogous to the value of a stock purchased with a call option.

Companies that use the project map categorize all their existing projects and proj- ects under consideration by the resources they require (e.g., engineers, time, capital, etc.) and by how they contribute to the company’s product line. The company can then map the project types and identify gaps in the development strategy. 

The mix of projects represented on such a map should be consistent both with the company’s resources, strategic position, and with its strategic intent 

As once noted by Jack Welch, for- mer CEO of General Electric, “You can’t grow long term if you can’t eat short term. Anyone can manage short. Anyone can manage long. Balancing those two things is what management is.”19 

conjoint analysis
A family of tech- niques that ena- bles assessment of the weight individuals put on different attributes of a choice. 

data envelopment analysis (DEA)
A method of ranking projects based on multiple decision criteria by comparing them to a hypo- thetical efficiency frontier. 

efficiency frontier The range of hypothetical configurations that optimize a combination of features. 

alliance Alliance is a general term that can refer to any type of relation- ship between firms. Alliances may be short or long term and may include for- mally contracted agreements or be entirely informal in nature. 

joint venture A partnership between two or more firms involving a sig- nificant equity stake by the part- ners and often resulting in the creation of a new business entity. 

Collaboration can include partnering with suppliers, customers, competitors, comple- mentors, organizations that offer similar products in different markets, organizations that offer different products in similar markets, nonprofit organizations, government organi- zations, universities, or others. Collaboration can also be used for many different pur- poses, including manufacturing, services, marketing, or technology-based objectives. 

The most common forms of collaborative arrangements used in technological innova- tion include strategic alliances, joint ventures, licensing, outsourcing, and collective research organizations. 

licensing A contractual arrangement whereby one organization or individual (the licensee) obtains the rights to use the proprietary technology (or trademark, or copyright, etc.) of another organization or individual (the licensor). 

capability complemen- tation Combining (“pooling”) the capabilities and other resources of partner firms, but not necessar- ily transferring those resources between the partners. 

capability transfer Exchange of capabilities across firms in such a manner that partners can internalize the capabilities and use them inde- pendently of the particular devel- opment project. 

managers should consider how their portfolio of alliances positions them in the web of relationships that connects their firm, their partners, and their partners’ partners.23 Such networks can be very influential in the diffusion of information and other resources, and being positioned well in an alli- ance network can confer significant advantages 

contract manufacturing When a firm hires another firm (often a specialized manufacturer) to manufacture its products. 

These risks can be minimized if the company limits the number of collaborations in which it engages, chooses its partners very carefully, and establishes appropriate monitoring and governance mechanisms to limit opportunism. 

Resource fit refers to the degree to which potential partners have resources that can be effectively integrated into a strategy that creates value.47 Such resources may be either complementary or supplementary. Most collaborations are motivated by the need to access resources the firm does not possess; such collaborations are based on the combination of complementary resources. 

Strategic fit refers to the degree to which partners have compatible objectives and styles. The objectives of the partners need not be the same as long as the objectives can be achieved without harming the alliance or the partners. Not knowing a partner’s true objectives or forging an alliance with a partner with incompatible objectives can result in conflict, wasted resources, and forfeited opportunities. 

governance – The act or process of exerting authority and/or control. 

alliance contracts Legally bind-ing contractual arrangements to ensure that partners (a) are fully aware of their rights and obligations in the collaboration and (b) have legal remedies avail- able if a partner should violate the agreement. 

equity ownership When each partner contrib- utes capital and owns a speci- fied right to a percentage of the proceeds from the alliance. 

relational governance Self-enforcing norms based on goodwill, trust, and reputation of the partners. These typically emerge over time through repeated experi- ences of working together. 

The num- ber of links an organization has in a network is known as its “degree centrality.” In general, the degree centrality of an organization tends to be strongly related to its size and prominence. The size and prominence of an organization help to determine how attractive it is to potential part- ners, and only large organizations typically have the resources necessary to manage a large num- ber of alliances. An organization does not, how- ever, have to be large or prominent to occupy a key brokerage position. 

appropriability The degree to which a firm is able to capture the rents from its innovation. 

tacit knowledge Knowledge that cannot be readily codified or trans- ferred in written form. 

socially complex knowledge Knowledge that arises from the interaction of multiple individuals. 

For some competitive situations, protecting a technology may not be as desirable as liberally diffusing it. In industries characterized by increasing returns, firms sometimes choose to liberally diffuse their technologies to increase their likelihood of rising to the position of dominant design.

open source software Software whose code is made freely available to others for use, augmentation, and resale. 

wholly proprietary systems Goods based on technology that is owned and vigorously pro- tected through patents, copy- rights, secrecy, or other mecha- nisms. Wholly proprietary tech- nologies may be legally produced and augmented only by their developers. 

wholly open systems Goods based on technology that is not protected and that is freely available for production or augmentation by other producers. 

original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) Firms that as- semble goods using components made by other manufacturers, also called value- added resellers (VARs). 

architectural control
The ability of a firm (or group of firms) to deter- mine the struc- ture, operation, compatibility, and development of a technology. 

If the firm is unable to produce the technology at sufficient volume or quality levels (or market the technology with sufficient intensity), then protecting the technology so that the firm is its sole provider may significantly hinder its adoption. 

if complementary goods influence the value of the technology to users, then the firm must (a) be able to produce the complements in sufficient range and quantity, (b) sponsor their production by other firms, or (c) encourage collective production of the complements through a more open technology strategy. 

If a firm lacks the production capability or expertise to produce a sufficient range of complementary goods, or the capital to acquire such capabilities quickly, it should encourage collective production of complements through a more open technology strategy and utilize forms of sponsorship. 

Resources for Internal Development 

If a firm does not have significant resources (capital, technological expertise) to invest in the technology’s functionality, it may have difficulty producing a technology that has an initial performance level, and rate of improvement, that the market finds attractive. In such instances, it can be valuable to tap the external development efforts of other firms (or individuals) through utilizing a more open technology strategy. 

A firm with architectural control can typically design the technology to be compatible with its own complements and incompatible with those of competitors. 

Technology trajectories are path dependent; minor events in their evolution can set them careen- ing off into unexpected directions. A firm that has a significant stake in a particular evolution path (because, for example, it has technological competencies that are much more amenable to one path of evolution than other potential paths) may place a high value on architectural control, which can enable it to co-opt or destroy less favorable development paths by denying their progenitors access to the market. 

Managers referred to Google as a flex- ible and flat “technocracy,” where resources and control were allocated based on the quality of people’s ideas rather than seniority or hierarchical status. Schmidt remarked, “One of the things that we’ve tried very hard to avoid at Google is the sort of divisional structure that prevents collaboration across units. It’s dif- ficult. So I understand why people want to build business units, and have their presidents. But by doing that you cut down the informal ties that, in an open culture, drive so much collaboration. If people in the organization understand the values of the company, they should be able to self-organize to work on the most interesting problems.”c 

it is often argued that small, flexible organizations with a minimum of rules and procedures will encourage creativity and experimentation, leading to more innovative ideas. At the same time, it is also frequently pointed out that well-developed procedures and standards can ensure that the organization makes better development investment decisions and is able to implement projects quickly and efficiently. 

disaggregated When something is separated into its constituent parts. 

formalization – The degree to which the firm utilizes rules, procedures, and written documentation to structure the behavior of individuals or groups within the organization. Formalization can substitute for some degree of managerial oversight, and thereby help large companies run smoothly with fewer managers. 

standardization – The degree to which activities are performed in a uniform manner. Standardization may be used to ensure quality levels are met and that custom- ers and suppliers are responded to consistently and equitably. However, by minimiz- ing variation, standardization can limit the creativity and experimentation that leads to innovative ideas. 

If a firm codifies all of its activities with detailed procedures, it may stifle employee creativity. Employees may not feel empowered or motivated to implement new solutions. 

centralization/ decentraliza- tion Centralization is the degree to which decision- making author- ity is kept at
top levels of management. Decentralization is the degree to which decision- making authority is pushed down to lower levels of the firm. 

mechanistic  An organiza- tion structure characterized by a high degree of formalization and standardiza- tion, causing operations to be almost automatic or mechanical. By establishing detailed rules, procedures, and standards, top management can push decision-making authority to lower levels of the firm while still ensuring that decisions are consistent with top management’s objectives. 

organic An organiza- tion structure characterized by a low degree of formalization and standardiza- tion. Employees may not have well-defined job responsibilities and operations may be charac- terized by a high degree of vari- ation. Employees are given far more lati- tude in their job responsibilities and operating procedures. Because much innovation arises from experimentation and improvisation, organic structures are often thought to be better for innovation despite their possible detriment to efficiency. 

ambidextrous organization The ability of an organization to behave almost as two different kinds of com- panies at once. Different divi- sions of the firm may have differ- ent structures and control systems, enabling them to have different cul- tures and patterns of operations. 

Skunk Works® 

Skunk Works® is a term that origi- nated with a divi- sion of Lockheed Martin that was formed in June of 1943 to quickly develop a jet fighter for the United States Army. It has evolved as skunk works to refer more generally to new product develop- ment teams that operate nearly autonomously from the parent organization, with considerable decentralization of authority and little bureauc- racy. 

there can be significant gains from isolating new product development teams from the mainstream organization.31 Separating the teams from the rest of the organization permits them to explore new alternatives, unfettered by the demands of the rest of the organization. 

Modularity is achieved in product design through the specification of standard inter- faces. 

Because modularity enables a wider range of end configurations to be achieved from a given set of inputs, it provides a relatively cost-effective way for firms to meet heterogeneous customer demands. Furthermore, since modularity can enable one component to be upgraded without changing other components, modular- ity can enable firms and customers to upgrade their products without replacing their entire system. 

By focusing on those activities in which the firm has a competitive advantage, the firm can improve its chance of developing a product that has a price-to-value ratio that attracts customers while reducing the overhead and administrative complexity of maintaining a wide scope of activities. This can cause whole industries to be trans- formed as large vertically integrated firms are displaced by nimbler, more specialized producers. 

center-for- global strategy
When all innova- tion activities are conducted at a central hub and innovations are then diffused throughout the company. This allows managers to:

  • Tightly coordinate all R&D activities (across both functions and projects). 
  • Achieve greater specialization and economies of scale in R&D activities while
    avoiding duplication of activities in multiple divisions. 
  • Develop and protect core competencies. 
  • Ensure that innovations are standardized and implemented throughout the company. 
  • a center-for-global approach tends to not be very responsive to the diverse demands of different markets. Furthermore, the divisions that serve these markets might resist adopting or promoting centrally developed innovations. As a result, inno- vations developed centrally may not closely fit the needs of foreign markets and may also not be deployed quickly or effectively.
  • local-for-local strategy When each divi- sion or subsidi- ary of the firm conducts its own R&D activities, tailored for the needs of the local market. 

There are several downsides to the local-for-local strategy, however. It can result in significant redundancy in activities as each division reinvents the wheel. Furthermore, each division may suffer from a lack of scale in R&D activities, and there is a risk that valuable innovations will not be diffused across the firm.

locally leveraged strategy
When each division or sub- sidiary of the firm conducts its own R&D activities, but the firm attempts to leverage result- ing innovations throughout the company. 

One way this strategy is employed in consumer markets is to assign an individual the role of international brand custodian. This person is responsible for ensuring that a successful brand is deployed into the firm’s multiple markets while also maintaining consistency in the product’s image and positioning.52 Such a strategy can be very effective if different markets the company serves have similar needs. 

globally linked strategy Innovation activities are decentralized, but also centrally coordinated for the global needs of the corporation. 

Bartlett and Ghoshal argue that, overall, the multinational firm’s objective is to make centralized innovation activities more effective (that is, better able to serve the various local markets) while making decentralized innovation activities more efficient (that is, eliminating redundancies and exploiting synergies across divisions). Bartlett and Ghoshal propose that firms should take a transnational approach wherein resources and capabilities that exist anywhere within the firm can be leveraged and deployed to exploit any opportunity that arises in any geographic market. They argue that this can be achieved by: 

  • Encouraging reciprocal interdependence among the divisions of the firm (that is, each division must recognize its dependency on the other divisions of the firm).
  • Utilizing integration mechanisms across the divisions, such as division-spanning
    teams, rotating personnel across divisions, and so on.
  • Balancing the organization’s identity between its national brands and its global image. 
  • member rotation programs facilitate the diffusion of knowledge throughout the firm.
  • We will begin by looking at the three key objectives of the new product develop- ment process: maximizing fit with customer requirements, minimizing cycle time, and controlling development costs. We then will turn to methods of achieving these objectives, including adopting parallel development processes, using project champi- ons, and involving customers and suppliers in the development process. Next we will look at a number of tools firms can utilize to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the development process, including creating go/kill decision points with stage- gate processes, defining design targets with quality function deployment, reducing costs and development time with design for manufacturing and CAD/CAM systems, and using metrics to assess the performance of the new product development process. 

For new product development to be successful, it must simultaneously achieve three sometimes-conflicting goals: (1) maximizing the product’s fit with customer requirements, (2) minimizing the development cycle time, and (3) controlling development costs. 

For a new product to be successful in the marketplace, it must offer more compelling features, greater quality, or more attractive pricing than competing products. Despite the obvious importance of this imperative, many new product development projects fail to achieve it. The firm may not have a clear sense of which features customers value the most, resulting in the firm’s overinvesting in some features at the expense of features the customer values more. Firms may also overestimate the customer’s willingness to pay for particular features, leading them to produce feature-packed products that are too expensive to gain significant market pen- etration. Firms may also have difficulty resolving heterogeneity in customer demands; if some customer groups desire different features from other groups, the firm may end up producing a product that makes compromises between these conflicting demands, and the resulting product may fail to be attractive to any of the customer groups. 

development cycle time
The time elapsed from project ini- tiation to product launch, usually measured in months or years. 

a company that is able to bring its product to market early has more time to develop (or encourage others to develop) complementary goods that enhance the value and attractiveness of the product. 

A firm with a short devel- opment cycle can take advantage of both first-mover and second-mover advantages. 

partly parallel development process
A development process in which some (or all) of the development activities at least partially overlap. That is, if activ- ity A would pre- cede activity B in a partly paral- lel development process, activity B might com- mence before activity A is completed. 

A sequential process has no early warning system to indicate that planned features are not manufacturable. Consequently, cycle time can lengthen as the project iterates back and forth between the product design and process design stages. 

Firms often make decisions about projects on the basis of financial considerations and level of production and technical synergy achieved by the new product proposal rather than on marketing criteria. This can lead to an overemphasis on incremental product updates that closely fit existing business activities.16 The screening decision should focus instead on the new product’s advantage and superiority to the consumer, and the growth of its target market. 

lead users  Customers who face the same general needs of the marketplace but are likely to experience them months or years earlier than the rest of the mar- ket and stand to benefit dispro- portionately from solutions to those needs. 

research has shown that many firms produce new products in less time, at a lower cost, and with higher quality by incorporating suppliers in inte- grated product development efforts.22 For example, consider Chrysler. Beginning in 1989, Chrysler reduced its supplier base from 2,500 to 1,140, offering the remaining suppliers long-term contracts and making them integrally involved in the process of designing new cars. Chrysler also introduced an initiative called SCORE (Supplier Cost Reduction Effort) that encouraged suppliers to make cost-saving suggestions in the development process. The net result was $2.5 billion in savings by 1998. 

crowdsourcing 

A distributed problem-solving model whereby a design problem or production task is presented to a group of people who voluntarily contribute their ideas and effort in exchange for compensation, intrinsic rewards, or a combination thereof. 

go/kill deci- sion points Gates established in the develop- ment process where managers must evaluate whether or not to kill the project or allow it to proceed. 

Each gate has three components: deliverables (these are the results of the previous stage and are the inputs for the gate review), criteria (these are the questions or metrics used to make the go/kill decision), and outputs (these are the results of the gate review process and may include a decision such as go, kill, hold, or recycle; outputs should also include an action plan for the dates and deliverables of the next gate). 

Some of the most prominent tools used to improve the development process include stage-gate processes, quality function deployment (“house of quality”), design for man- ufacturing, failure modes and effects analysis, and computer-aided design/computer- aided manufacturing. Using the available tools can greatly expedite the new product development process and maximize the product’s fit with customer requirements. 

Stage 1, the team does a quick investigation and conceptualization of the project. 

Stage 2, the team builds a business case that includes a defined product, its business justification, and a detailed plan of action for the next stages. 

Stage 3, the team begins the actual design and development of the product, including mapping out the manufactur- ing process, the market launch, and operating plans. In this stage, the team also defines the test plans utilized in the next stage. 

Stage 4, the team conducts the verification and validation process for the proposed new product, and its marketing and production. 

Stage 5, the product is ready for launch, and full commercial production and selling commence. 

At Microsoft, almost all projects receive either a post- mortem discussion or a written postmortem report to ensure that the company learns from each of its development experiences. These postmortems tend to be extremely candid and can be quite critical. As noted by one Microsoft manager, “The purpose of the document is to beat yourself up.” 

Measures of the success of the new product development process can help management to: 

  • Identify which projects met their goals and why. 
  • Benchmark the organization’s performance compared to that of competitors or to the organization’s own prior performance. 
  • Improve resource allocation and employee compensation. 
  • Refine future innovation strategies.

Multiple measures are important because any measure used singly may not give a fair representation of the effectiveness of the firm’s development process or its overall innovation performance. Also, the firm’s development strategy, industry, and other environmental circumstances must be considered when formulating measures and interpreting results.

social loafing When an individual in a team does not exert the expected amount of effort and relies instead on the work of other team members. 

cross- functional teams – Teams whose members are drawn from multiple func- tional areas in the firm such as R&D, marketing, manufacturing, distribution, and so on. 

Teams that are composed of people from diverse backgrounds have several advan- tages over teams that are drawn from only one or a few functional areas.9 A greater variety of specialists provides a broader knowledge base and increases the cross- fertilization of ideas. 

Functional experts often actively read journals and are involved in associations that directly affect their trade. These activities can lead to the creation and improvement of innovative ideas, as well as provide solutions to product develop- ment problems. 

homophily 

The tendency for individuals to like other people whom they perceive as being similar to themselves.

The most successful new prod- uct development teams have gatekeepers who provide important links to the environment. Ancona and Caldwell found that teams engaged in three primary types of boundary- spanning activity: 

 Ambassador activities—These activities were directed at representing the team to others and protecting the team from interference. For example, an ambassador might convince other individuals in the organization that the team’s activities are important. 

Task coordination activities—These activities emphasized coordinating and negotiating the team’s activities with other groups. For 

instance, task coordination activities might include negotiating delivery deadlines with other divisions of the firm or obtaining feed- back about the team’s performance.
Scouting activities—These activities were directed at scanning for ideas and information that might be useful to the team, enhancing its knowledge base. For example, scouting activities could include collecting data about what competitors were doing on similar projects or finding technical information that might be useful in the development project. 

Kichuk and Wiesner found that the personality characteristics that enhanced the success of a new product development team were high extroversion, high agreeableness, and low neuroticism.20 

Autonomous teams typically excel at rapid and efficient new product development, particularly when such development requires breaking away from the organization’s existing technologies and routines. Thus, autonomous teams are typically considered to be appropriate for break- through projects and some major platform projects. They can be the birthplace of new business units.25 However, the independence of the autonomous teams can cause them to underutilize the resources of the parent organization. 

In heavyweight and autonomous teams, the project manager must be someone who can lead and evalu- ate the team members, champion the development project both within the team and to the wider organization, and act as a translator between the various functions. 

The contract book provides a tool for monitoring and evaluating the team’s performance in meeting objectives by providing a set of performance benchmarks and deadlines to which the team’s performance can be compared. More important, however, the contract book is an important mechanism for estab- lishing team commitment to the project and a sense of ownership over the project. After negotiation and acceptance of this contract, all parties often sign the contract book as an indication of their intention to honor the plan and achieve the results. 

Gassman and von Zedtwitz studied 37 technology-intensive multinationals and identi- fied four patterns of teams: (1) decentralized self-coordination, (2) system integrator as coor- dinator, (3) core team as system architect, and (4) centralized venture team. 

The value of any technological innovation is only partly determined by what the tech- nology can do. A large part of the value of an innovation is determined by the degree to which people can understand it, access it, and integrate it within their lives. Deploy- ment is not just a way for the firm to earn revenues from its innovations; deployment is a core part of the innovation process itself. 

Generally, firms try to decrease their development cycles in order to decrease their costs and to increase their timing of entry options, but this does not imply that firms should always be racing to launch their products as early as possible. A firm can stra- tegically use launch timing to take advantage of business cycle or seasonal effects, to position its product with respect to previous generations of related technologies, and to ensure that production capacity and complementary goods or services are in place. 

cannibaliza- tion When a firm’s sales of one product (or at one location) diminish its sales of another of its products (or at another of its locations). 

If the firm invests in continuous innovation and willingly cannibalizes its existing products with more advanced products, the firm can make it very difficult for other firms to achieve a technological lead large enough to prove persuasive to customers. 

backward compatible When products of a technological generation can work with products of a previous generation. For example, a computer is backward compatible if it can run the same software as a previous generation of the computer. 

penetration pricing – When the price of a good is set very low (or free) to maxi- mize the good’s market share. 

When it is unclear how customers will respond to a particular price point, firms often use introductory pricing that indicates the pricing is for a stipulated time. This allows the company to test the market’s response to a product without committing to a long-term pricing structure. 

manufactur- ers’ repre- sentatives Independent agents that pro- mote and sell the product lines of one or a few man- ufacturers. They are often used when direct sell- ing is appropriate but the manu- facturer does not have a sufficiently large direct sales force to reach all appropriate mar- ket segments. 

wholesalers 

Companies that buy manufac- turer’s products in bulk, and
then resell them (often in smaller or more diverse bundles) to other supply channel members such as retailers. 

retailers 

Companies that sell goods to the public. 

original equipment manufac- turer (or value-added reseller) 

A company that buys products (or components of products) from other manufac- turers and assem- bles them or customizes them into a product that is then sold under the OEM’s own name. 

disintermedi- ation
When the number of inter- mediaries in a supply channel is reduced; for example, when manufacturers bypass whole- salers and/or retailers to sell directly to end users. 

How the product is sold may also affect the product’s positioning from the perspective of the customer. For example, if competing products are primarily sold in a high-contact mode such as specialty stores or via a direct sales force, selling the new product in a lower-contact channel such as mass discounters or through mail order might cause the customer to perceive the product as being of lower quality or more economical. 

Firms introducing a technological innovation can use strategic alliances or exclusivity contracts to encourage distributors to carry and promote their goods. By providing a distributor a stake in the success of the new technology, the firm may be able to persuade the distributor to carry and promote the new technology aggressively. 

viral marketing Sending informa- tion directly to targeted indi- viduals in effort to stimulate word-of-mouth advertising. Individuals are typically chosen on the basis of their position or role in particular social networks. 

These stages of adoption have been related to the adopter categories of inno- vators (in the very early stages); followed by early adopters, which cause adoption to accelerate; then the early majority and late majority as the innovation penetrates the mass market; and finally the laggards as the innovation approaches saturation.7 The characteristics of these groups make them responsive to different marketing strategies. 

A firm that aggressively promotes its products can increase both its actual installed base and its perceived installed base. 

Any of these individuals is capable of sparking an information epidemic:

Connectors are individuals who tend to form an exceptionally large circle of acquaintances. Sociolo- gists have found that if a random sample of people is asked to identify the individuals they know on a first-name basis, connectors will identify many times the number of people an average person identifies. 

Mavens are individuals who are driven to obtain and disseminate knowledge about one or more of their interests. Economists have widely studied “market mavens,” otherwise known as “price vigilantes.” 

salespersons are those individuals who are naturally talented persuaders. Such individu- als are gifted at providing verbal responses that their listener is likely to find compelling. 

On Social Media’s False Democratic Promise: Virality, Newsworthiness, and Propaganda

Since the widespread adoption of social media by Americans, news outlets have sought to incorporate it into the new media landscape. Whether this takes the form of Tweets of those involved in a specific news story having their comments read on air; the views of established commentators being read; live events on Facebook; Ask Me Anything on Reddit, etc. – social media is seen as providing the means for reporting that is more democratic – not just for allowing more voices to potentially be incorporated into reporting but also as a story’s newsworthiness is increasingly being chosen for packaging by news companies based upon the things that are trending online.

The rationale for this is understandable, in an age wherein people now spend more of the time on their computer, this allows for a means of engaging audiences in a novel fashion and being able to discern what is important to the audience in advance allows news teams to produce content based upon what is cared about. But as an indicator of actual interest in a topic, virality itself is tricky as it can so easily be falsified.

Dianne Feinstein and the Climate Kids

After official treatment by TeleSUR, commentary spreads throughout the Kultural Marxism ecosystem and their sock-puppet army engages with it to create the appearance of virality.

In an article by Mark Heertsgard in The Nation entitled, On March 15, the Climate Kids are Coming you can see an example of how this plays out. Here is an extended quote describing the birth of the Green New Deal:

“Last November, Sunrise activists welcomed the incoming Democratic majority in the US House of Representatives with protest signs demanding that Democrats “Step Up or Step Aside.” Next, they occupied the office of incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to demand her support for a Green New Deal. The sit-in went viral after Ocasio-Cortez, likewise rejecting the wait-your-turn etiquette expected of freshmen members, joined the protesters. The mainstream media picked up the story, and voilà: The Green New Deal was on its way. “

Whatever one’s position on the Green New Deal, knowledge of the connection between it and Venezuela’s Gramscian Project in America as well as the image at the top of this section clearly shows virality not only to be an empty indicator of actual interest in political policy, but also as a means for getting content re-shared on older and more established media platforms with a wider audience. In other words, virality is manufactured by people with access to coordinated inauthentic behavior networks and thus the democratic promise of social media via genuine engagements dies.

Media workers can quickly turn political events into memes in an attempt to control the interpretation of events and give an impression that this interpretation is hegemonic.

The kids in the Sunrise Movement, Bay Area Earth Guardians and Youth vs. Apocalypse may not get this – but those that then booked them on Democracy Now and others do.

Regardless of the perceived imperative of their causes, online networks of digital activists, intellectuals and artists that falsify how many people actually care about something and to what extent they care about it do their own cause a disservice by opening them to criticisms of propagandists and via the normalization of such behavior. With many actors engaged in such same spam-like activities, social media platforms like Facebook become a staging ground for propaganda campaigns – something which is a far cry from the services most users signed up for.

This image was widely shared by Venezuelan and Russian coordinated inauthentic behavior networks on social media.

Another example of this is the news story of how the ‘Iconic’ image of Palestinian Protestor goes viral. The image was turned into memes connecting it with Lady Liberty Leading the People and the number of comments left on news sites with such features was high. Rather than a bunch of posts of pictures of comments by bots, I decided to quote someone often cited by critics of America, Noam Chomsky, who claimed that “Propaganda is to a democracy what a bludgeon is to the totalitarian state.”

Karl Marx and Teen Vogue

Interestingly, this article on Teen Vogue begins with a variation on the virality theme addressed above. By alluding to perceived popularity, this article begins with the sentence: “You may have come across communist memes on social media. The man, the meme, the legend behind this trend is Karl Marx, who developed the theory of communism, which advocates for workers’ control over their labor (instead of their bosses).”

Considering that many if not most of these meme groups were developed with the assistance of Venezuelan Intelligence Officers and that Teen Vogue itself is deeply connected with them – this is yet another example of a false authenticity and virality being the cause to justify it publication.

The last case that I’ll cover here is that of George Ciccariello-Maher, the Drexel Professor who went ‘viral’ for a white Genocide Tweet. While not reported until several months after the events, it was later revealed that this and a number of other of GCM’s Tweets were in fact boosted by sock-puppet accounts connected to Russia – who is Venezuela’s media partner! Considering George Ciccariello-Maher’s long-standing connections to Venezuelan Intelligence what this means for his credibility as an academic, or political commentator is unknown – but given the extensive media coverage he received over it, it’s worth adding this fact to the historical record.

Newsworthiness and Propaganda

These three viral but not necessarily newsworthy narratives all draw on a similar and well-established framing for propaganda – the powerless standing up to the powerful. In the above cases we see a group of non-voting age students and their parents try to pigeonhole a Senator to get her to agree to the Green New Deal; a group of poorly armed activists entering the military zone of a neighboring power to dismantle its borders; a lone professor takes on White Supremacism with a single tweet.

And yet despite addressing vastly different subjects – the environment, Palestine and White Supremacy – all of them are not only connected the same coordinated inauthentic behavior networks but also demonstrate the same anti-systemic political sensibilities. I’m not saying that these narratives should be silenced, but when seeking to understand the current political moment it’s important to recognize that foreign powers see value in creating such political polarization and that this is destructive to the democratic process.

What Preparations for Warfare Looks Like on Facebook

Click on the photo to get a closer view of what I describe below.
There are tens of thousands of Venezuelan and Russian accounts on Facebook that operates in conjunction with one another. They go from spamming online clearance sales; promoting the dream of Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela controlling all of Latin America and arguments why certain politicians should be assassinated.

 

The official Russian military is filled with sock puppets accounts. What their relationships are to any actual military or intelligence operations is currently unknown.

Trigger Warning and the Radical Atlanta-Caracas Axis

Before the episode in which Killer Mike illustrates 21st Century Socialism in action, he states his identification with Fela, a musician who is also revered and endorsed by former Bolivarian Republica of Venezuela Ambassador Jesus “Chucho” Garcia.

I can’t think of a better connection to illustrate the validity of my previously written article hypothesizing that Trigger Warning staring Killer Mike was Venezuelan propaganda than cultural activist Jesus “Chucho” Garcia holding up a CD of Fela. I wonder, did they ever meet?

This is a pretty dope album to listen to front to back. I get why they dig em.

Algorith​m​s, Authenticity, and Coordinated, Inauthentic Behavior: A Case Study in Caitlin Johnstone

For social media to operate as designed, users engagement must be authentic.

A lot of conversations are going on online about the nature of censorship, social media, democracy and technology and yet not one of the commentaries made by people who’ve claimed victimization or decried others that I’ve read thus far has demonstrated adequate subject area knowledge about what’s been going on.

This article will review three concepts important to discussions about social media in relationship to algorithms, authenticity, and coordinated, inauthentic behavior; using Caitlin Johnstone’s Medium and Facebook account as a brief case study.

Many factors feed into the algorithm so that users get an enjoyable experience and so that bad actors are inhibited from falsifying their engagement number

As of March 5th 2019, there are 394 million responses to the Google Query of “Facebook Algorithm”. And yet Abby Martin, Jimmy Dore, Lee Camp, Aaron Mate, Branko Marcetic, Chris Hedges – anyone that’s been contracted to work for Venezuelan and Russian state media outlets really – have a real hard time understanding what it is.

In the simplest terms as it applies to this case, algorithms a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations; they quantify lots of data according to specific terms for use of some sort. PCTR, or Interest, Post, Creator, Type, and Recency are just five of the myriad factors which fit into such problem-solving processes for social media platform. One of the most important of these qualities is Authenticity. Authenticity means that what data is being recorded and used in the algorithm stems from normal use. Coordinated inauthentic behavior is when groups of people seek to boost algorithmic ranking through planned actions – such as liking, sharing, commenting, watching, creating regional group pages, etc.

Given her claim that she is just a “rogue journalist” without any kind of institutional affiliation or disclosure of support from states such as Russia and Venezuela, it’s surprising that Caitlin Johnstone also has trouble understanding this.

Caitlin Johnstone and her Collection of Venezuelan/Russian Sock Puppet Followers.
Notice that Ajamu Baraka and Jimmy Dore are categorized as related pages.

Caitlin Johnstone’s journalism has lead to controversies in Arc Digital, Counterpoint, Mint Press News, Daily Kos, and other outlets. Sometimes described as a Cassandra Fairbanks-like content creator, a former TeleSUR contractor, I honestly haven’t read much Caitlin Johnstone. Like a TeleSUR contractor and Jacobin author Branko Marcetic, she is an Australian without demonstrable specialized subject area knowledge in the subjects she writes about – I’ll give her that the wacky-tacky Doomsday Prepper poetess schtick does provide some decent turns of phrase in what I did read, but as numerous others have stated the editorial standards are very low. .

While I haven’t read anything since last she popped up on my radar in connection to Orwellian Irony, an alert I have for a certain set of search terms came to my inbox and so I again found myself on her Medium page. One there I saw echoed the commentary framed in almost exactly the same way that I encountered in my research on TeleSUR, slightly different opinions but similarly based on significant omissions and distortions.

Darrel Koerner’s may be a real person, but on Medium he only exists to boost the engagement numbers for Caitlin Johnstone.

Shortly before my Medium account was taken down due to the coordinated activity of a group of Trans activists known as ACTUP, I posted a comment on this article that Caitlin Johnstone had published about Venezuela just a few minutes before. As she’d responded to the person who wrote two minutes before, I asked her a question.

Not only did I not get a response from the author, but I then watched in real time as a stream of comments that started to fill the response board and that lots of claps were being given to low-quality comments. My thoughtful request comment was literally drowned out by comments that looked suspicious. I decided to take a peak, and sure enough – they were! After looking at several of the accounts that had posted comments – it was clear that there were a number of sock puppet accounts heaping praise in the form of claps and engagement in the form of low-quality comments on the blog.

joe blow too only seems to exist to comment on Caitlin Johnstone’s page, but he also seems to have another connection.

Like Darrel, the entirety of Joe Blow’s comments exist solely on the comments section of Caitlin Johnstone’s Medium page.

Like Darrel, these comments are small quotes, trite praises for “telling the truth” or comments only tangentially connected to the topic. It’s filler.

Unlike Darrel, Jow Blow has a profile image – however, it’s likely that this is not of him.

Unlike Darrel, Joe Blow may have a verifiable connection to a known disinformation account.

joeblowman: Alien master-race controlling the world; anti-semitic; unscientific biohacking; 9/11 Conspiracy Theories; anti-semitic & Nazi propaganda all orbiting one another.

Why I decided to include two accounts that only commented on Caitlin Johnstone was to hint at it’s prevalence – there are a number of other such Medium accounts that seem to exist only to fluff Caitlin or one or two other authors, and as in doing research for another article I found another Joe Blow. In that other article, I show the behavioral connections between joeblowman and a larger network of right-wing fringe content sharers connected to Venezuela’s Kultural Marxism network. It’s hard to make the hard connections, but birds of a feather do flock together.

To be clear, I’m not saying that these Jow Blows are the same people – I’m just saying that given the lack of creativity of Venezuelan and Russian coordinated inauthentic networks it’s very, very likely that they are.

When Social Media platforms and Google respond to such coordinated inauthentic behaviors by penalizing those that have brazenly broken their terms and conditions, as it would seem that Caitlin Johnstone has done in this instance, it is not to silence speech – but to make the marketplace of ideas more democratic by having one’s numbers being honest and authentic.

Glossary of Technology Terms

TECHNOLOGICAL GLOSSARY

Technology development: Development of products, processes, equipment and operating methods. It includes research and pilot processes.

Sustainable development and social responsibility: The production of the present must not affect the production of the future, seeking to rehabilitate, preserve and conserve renewable resources and the quality of the environment. It implies taking responsibility for the impact. Its objective is to prevent and mitigate the environmental impact that productive activities may cause on the natural heritage and the quality of life.

Technological development: Set of activities through which seeks to improve or generate new processes or products in the production or administration of the company. It includes one or more forms of research (basic, applied, experimental), but also refers to activities such as adapting technology, solving technical problems and standardization (analysis, inspection and testing of raw materials and inputs, machines and products) ).

Technological unemployment: It is understood as a probable consequence of the application of new technologies or of the substitution of some process by another one that is more intensive in the use of capital.

Technological diagnosis: It consists of systematizing and analyzing the pertinent data of information and technological intelligence; qualify, in relation to quality and productivity, the level of technological modernity of the company in relation to competitors; qualify the potential of own technological development and by technology acquisitions, with reference to the tendencies indicated by the technological prospective; identify bottlenecks related to technology that prevent the company from moving towards higher levels of quality in processes and products; identify specific lines of research and development and technological innovation to increase the capacity for competition in general and for the improvement of quality, in particular.

Diffusion: Process of propagation of a technical innovation among potential users (adoption of a new technique), its continuous improvement and adaptation.

Dimension: One of the criteria under which a certain indicator can be analyzed within an organization.

Effectiveness: Systematic generation of consistent results integrating effectiveness and efficiency. Customer satisfaction is achieved with the optimal use of resources.

Efficiency: Contribution of the obtained results to the fulfillment of global objectives (of the society); relevance, relevance, validity or socioeconomic utility of the results (predefined objectives).

Efficiency: Measures the amount of resources used to achieve the proposed objective, that is, it relates the degree of use of the resources of the production process.

Link between basic and applied research. The presence of efficient connectors that link the results of laboratory research with industrial practice. The realization of industrial scaling for new products. Participation in this process of highly qualified personnel (PhD level), interaction with research centers and universities.

Entity: Any important thing within the organization that deserves to be embodied in a data model.

Support entities: The existence of entities for the development of innovation, through the provision of advice and funding such as: Institute for the promotion of Innovation, INNOVAR, TECNOS, CORPODIB. Technological centers for research such as CORPOICA; CENICAFE, this project that presents the current situation of innovation and gives guidelines for improvement.

Strategy: Mode of relating to the environment; form (ways, modalities) of reaching the proposed objectives. In the strategies, the philosophy of the company is specified. The strategies express the way in which the company hopes to sustain itself or increase its participation in the market. The strategies can be of a financial nature, focus on marketing and marketing or be oriented to technological development. The strategies also show the aspirations of the company, regarding the positioning in its productive sector and the capacity to generate greater added value.

Organizational structure: The organizational structure is the way to group human and material resources, defining the role of each unit, in the sense of making its administration more viable and achieving the objectives of the organization. When technological development becomes an important strategy, the challenge is to make it a systematic and permanent activity. For this, it is necessary to adapt the organization and structure of the firm, defining the functions, responsibilities and means.

Technological evaluation: Process of systematic analysis, prediction and assessment of a wide range of impacts on society, the environment and the economy, related to selection and technological change, in order to identify public policy, investment and production options . Evaluation of the social, environmental and economic costs of existing technologies, of the form of environmental pollution, social disturbances, infrastructure costs, etc., anticipation of probable harmful effects of new technologies; design methods to minimize these costs and evaluation of the possible benefits of the introduction of new or alternative technologies in terms of social, environmental and economic needs. The technological evaluation has tended to be translated, however, into a relevance analysis and cost-benefit calculations. The evaluation of technological alternatives is an internal process of the company, consisting of the identification of technological offers, national and international, in the individual valuation of said offers and in the determination of their impacts, based on the knowledge and experience of the company.

Evaluation: Process oriented to decision making and action, which seeks to determine the relevance, effectiveness and impact of the use of resources, activities and results based on pre-established objectives. The evaluation, which can be “exante” or “expost”, constitutes a dynamic, technical, systematic, rigorous, transparent, open and participatory process, supported by data, sources, information and diverse agents and explicitly incorporated in the process of taking decisions. The evaluation unit (evaluator) must be independent of the political authorities and executors involved, and have credibility and autonomy. Currently, multi-criteria evaluation methods are used in a wide variety of problems, including the evaluation of projects.

Critical success factor: Those areas where satisfactory performance is essential in order for a business to be successful; characteristics, conditions or variables that have a direct influence on customer satisfaction in a specific business process; the group of activities that must be carried out correctly if a vision is to be achieved.

Environmental management: Activity oriented to the application of modern management principles and techniques to the process of sustainable production, seeking to establish alternatives for the use of natural resources that are economically, ecologically and socially sustainable. Its objective is to incorporate environmental considerations in the planning processes and in the definition of development programs and projects.

Quality management: proactive management of productive, administrative and commercial resources to ensure the achievement of the global objectives defined in the plans and development strategies of the organization When the company is organized to perform with quality products and each of the operations productive and administrative, it is possible to achieve significant changes through a series of innovations that use quality control. The organization for continuous improvement favors creativity and constitutes a very important input to achieve mastery of productive and administrative technologies.

Information management: The company must document its technological development activities so that the institutional memory is kept up-to-date, the collective use of knowledge is facilitated, mistakes are not repeated and efficiency is achieved in the actions. Business information today must be conceived as a source of knowledge and decision, not only of registration. The information at managerial level must be designed to generate knowledge and this to allow opportunity of action that at the same time generates innovation.

Management of technological innovation: It is the process aimed at organizing and directing the available resources, both human and technical and economic, with the aim of increasing the creation of new knowledge, generating ideas that allow obtaining new products, processes and services or improving existing, and transfer those same ideas to the manufacturing and marketing phases.

Personnel management: Innovative companies must have an excellent management of human resources, therefore it is a fundamental variable for business success nowadays. The management of creative human teams must take into account the following aspects: motivate creativity, give spaces to generate ideas, accept and practice suggestions given by workers, select people with innovative capacity and interdisciplinarity. The transformation of companies must be advanced through human resources, implementing a model focused on leadership and the improvement of various aspects of the company and people. Through the human factor companies improve their operational efficiency and achieve high performance teams. These elements produce efficient and flexible organizations oriented to the client and obtain better results.

Technology management: The process by which companies manage their technological resources, understood in terms of hard technologies incorporated in machinery and soft technologies semicorporated in advisory or training courses, or disincorporated in the form of manuals, books, plans, patents, among others.

Management of the human factor: The way in which the human factor intervenes and manages innovation. It consists of four elements: The training of staff constantly. The promotion of teamwork. The integration of the personnel and the creation and application of strategic personnel groups (mixture of professionals with people from the base of the organizational charts). The development of creativity in all the staff.

Human Resource Management: Way to manage human resources, motivating them towards continuous improvement. The elements that constitute it are: 1) Training and ongoing training; 2) Stimulus to creativity; 3) Motivation; 4) Leadership and 5) Teamwork.

Technological management: Application of management techniques in support of technological innovation processes. The ability of the company to make knowledge and information productive. As a branch of industrial engineering, technological management is defined as the set of activities and business decisions related to the technological variable, within a holistic and systemic vision of the organization, in order to be competitive in the global market. Technological management is an interdisciplinary field in which knowledge of engineering, science and administration is mixed in order to carry out the planning, development and implementation of technological solutions that contribute to the achievement of the strategic and tactical objectives of an organization. In technological management, technological needs and opportunities are identified, and technological solutions are planned, designed, developed and implemented; it constitutes a process of administration of technological research activities and the transfer of its results to the productive units.

Enabler: Practices, processes or methods that facilitate the implementation of a best practice and allow satisfying a critical factor of success, help explain why the performance indicated by a benchmark.

Management indicator: It is a measure of the condition of a process or event at a given moment; is a relationship between quantitative or qualitative variables, which allows observing the situation and trends of change generated with the object or phenomenon observed, with respect to objectives and expected goals and expected influences. The indicators can be values, units, indexes, statistical series and, together, they can provide an overview of the situation of a process, a business or the general state of a company. By using them in a timely and up-to-date manner, the indicators allow for adequate control over a given situation; The main reason for its importance is that it is possible to predict and act based on the positive or negative trends observed in overall performance.

Adaptation of technology: Process during which foreign technologies are modified in order to accommodate them to local conditions in terms of market size, raw materials and consumer needs, among others.

Total quality management: It refers to the establishment of policies, objectives, annual plans, strategies and quality activities, which lead to comprehensive quality through the participation of everyone in the company. It also includes the formalization of quality in the company through structures, responsibilities, standards, procedures, methods, tools and techniques determined to achieve it. It contains all the required documentation including national and international standards that govern the product and process.

Acquisition of technology not incorporated in goods: In the form of patents, licenses, know-how, brands, projects, models and services with technological content.

Acquisition of technology: Selection of the technological inputs that are more attractive to acquire than to develop. Includes selection, negotiation and transfer.

Assimilation of technology: It is when the person or company that acquires it is able to exercise total control over it, understanding as such the full application to the productive activities in which it is used, its possible reproduction, adaptation and improvement, application to new situations within the company and distribution of it to third parties.

Technological audit: Follow-up to the technology that was acquired, adapted or developed to establish its goodness and real use.

Benchmark: Measuring best-in-class achievement, benchmark or standard measure to be compared, this novel is recognized as the standard of excellence for a specific business process.

Generic Benchmarking: Benchmarking process that compares a function function of a particular company or process with two or more independent companies in your industry.

Internal benchmarking: The comparison process carried out within an organization between similar units or business processes.

Benchmarking: An organizational improvement tool based on the evaluation and continuous analysis of practices; processes; policies and strategies recognized in the market as successful; for its subsequent adaptation and assimilation in an organization.

Biotechnology: Use and manipulation of biological processes using microbial agents, plant or animal cells or their derivatives to generate or modify products and processes, improve plants or animals and develop microorganisms for their application in agricultural activities, health, food production; project and selection of equipment such as enzymatic reactors, etc.

Data Warehouse: See Data Warehouse.

Productive chain: The productive chains are the continuous and discontinuous flows of products, processes and aggregation of values, which follow the primary products until reaching the final consumer.

Technical change: In a broad sense, it is an advance, a change in technique (production method) or the adoption of a different technique. Technical change refers to obtaining a specific product with a different amount or proportion of inputs (labor and capital), that is, a zero displacement along the production function; the qualitative improvement of existing products or processes or the introduction of new processes or products. A technical change occurs through innovation and, to some extent, diffusion. Changes in technique do not necessarily imply new technology; they may simply consist of imitation and diffusion of existing techniques or substitution of factors. Play an important role in models of economic growth; However, there is some controversy regarding the extent to which it is an exogenous factor in economic growth. Sometimes it is confused with the terms technological change and technical progress.

Technological change: It is an advance in technology, an increase in technical knowledge or in the available set of techniques; a change in technology itself, in a strict sense. It is a change within the technical relations of production. Technological change is a process closely related to technological research, invention, innovation and diffusion. Technological change can be defined as the process through which societies acquire and put into practice new and better ways of producing new and better goods and services. It is a social process that presents a complex cause-and-effect relationship with cultural transformations. It also influences the structures, mentalities and values ​​of society; which, in turn, condition technological innovations. There are several motivations that lead a company to value technological change, some of an endogenous nature and others of an exogenous nature.

Cycle P.H.V.A. (Plan, Do, Check, Act). The P.H.V.A. is a managerial conception that dynamizes the relationship between man and processes and seeks to control them based on the establishment, maintenance and improvement of standards, a task that is advanced through the definition of project specifications (quality standards), technical specifications of process and operating procedures. This cycle effectively helps to adopt and monitor the processes of a company, as long as it is constituted in an endless procedure, that is to say, that is planned, an action is taken, it is verified if the results were the expected and acted about these results to restart the cycle.

Competitiveness: In general terms, competitiveness refers to the capacity of an entity (organization, region or country) to create added value and increase its wealth by managing assets and processes, enhancing local and regional factors based on its internationalization within of a project of economic and social development. Competitiveness is the ability of a company, sector, region or country to maintain, grow or expand or diversify in a market. The competitiveness of the biotechnology sector food and beverages is a measure of the ability of economic agents (producers, industrialists and traders) to design, produce and sell goods whose attributes in terms of prices, environmental sustainability and satisfaction of needs and demands are combined to form a more attractive package than that of similar products offered by competitors, taking into account that the final judge is the national and international market. What is important for competitiveness (and productivity) is not the amount of technological research, but the ability to frame technological developments (innovations, technical progress), within a company strategy.

Conceptualization of technological innovation. It consists of the way in which technological innovation is interpreted within the sector. It consists of three elements: The interpretation of innovation as a process that seeks to introduce new products, processes or internal improvements into the market. The interpretation of innovation as a process of technology transfer. The interpretation of innovation as research and development activities that do not need to be commercialized.

Ad hoc query: It is a query that can not be easily satisfied by means of a data model previously constructed.

Technical assistance contract: It is the set of activities dedicated to advising and training a certain entity in the solution of its technical problems during a certain period of time.

License Agreement: Is the permission granted by the grantor or provider of the technology to another person or company to exploit a patent, a registered trademark, an industrial model or drawing and a secret process during a determined period.

Patent contract: It is the exclusive right, granted under the Law, for the exploitation of a technical innovation and that excludes other parties from the production, sale, import and use of the product that is the subject of the patent. It is a form of industrial property.

Management control: The management control is a managerial, integral and strategic instrument that, supported by indicators, indexes and tables produced in a systematic, periodic and objective way, allows the organization to be effective to attract resources, efficient to transform them and effective for channel them. Management control is a system of statistical, financial, administrative and operational information that, placed at the service of the organization’s management, allows it to take correct or timely decisions, adopt corrective measures that correspond and control the evolution over time of the main variables and processes.

Creation of technology: It is the search for original solutions to existing problems that require a technological solution, whether applied to processes in machinery and equipment or in people in the form of knowledge or training.

Creativity of professionals. The techniques and mechanisms used to encourage and develop the creativity of the people directly involved with the innovation process, especially professionals. The sector’s concern for encouraging creativity.

Business culture: Incorporated in the principles, behaviors, norms, beliefs and values ​​that constitute the expression of the business philosophy. It defines the way of thinking of the company, the way of acting.

Organizational culture: The culture is specific to each organization, including the values, beliefs and behaviors that are consolidated and shared during the business life. The leadership style at the level of senior management, the rules, procedures and general characteristics of the members of the company complete the combination of elements that make up the culture of a company. Organizational culture is the way of “thinking”, “feeling” and “acting” of organizations. It must be developed around effectiveness, whose main element is the self-learning that is achieved through the search for what influences the behavior of people, inquiring about what motivates and “moves” to do.

Data Mart: Data Warehouse limited in scope and / or approach.

Data Warehouse Global: Data Warehouse that covers the information needs

of the organization as a whole.

Data Warehouse: A copy of transactional data specifically structured for queries and analysis, which is Oriented towards topics, with Integrated information, which supports variations over time and whose information is not volatile.

DBMS: Abbreviation for Database Management System.

Technological disaggregation: It is the breakdown of each of the components of a technological package for the production and distribution of a good or a service. It seeks to disaggregate spinal and peripheral technology in order to improve the negotiating position of the acquirer, reduce the cost and volume of acquisition, generate demand for local goods and services and stimulate the dissemination and assimilation of technology.

Process technology: Refers to the conditions, procedures and forms of organization necessary to combine inputs, human resources and capital goods in an appropriate manner to produce a good or a service. It usually has to do with process manuals, plant manuals, performance calculations, material and energy balances, distribution of equipment, etc.

Product technology: It is the part of the technological package related to the standards, specifications and general quality and presentation requirements that a good or a service must fulfill. If you want to create a package where the product technology is predominant, you should have information regarding the description and drawings of the product, the manuals of use, application and maintenance of the same, the formulas and compositions, the specifications of raw materials, assembly instructions, tolerance, etc., as well as industrial property issues such as patents and trademarks.

Cutting-edge technology: It is the most modern of all. It usually requires a high capital investment for its acquisition and few companies own it.

Disincorporated technology: It is one whose knowledge has been extracted from people or objects.

Dynamic technology: That which has a high development through the time of validity of the technology.

Hard technology: The part of knowledge that refers to equipment, products, facilities, processes and materials developed by an organization. Hard technology refers to the mechanical aspects or hardware. It refers to the automatic and systematic, in this the risk is zero because it does not involve the emotional part of the people; It contemplates everything that is protocolized and is rigid.

Emerging technology: It is one that is appearing in the economic and industrial field and is being used by some companies.

Static technology: Represents low level of development through the time of validity of the technology.

Embedded technology: These are technologies that are neither modern nor primitive.

Acquisition of Technology Incorporated into Capital: those situations in which concepts, ideas and methods are incorporated into the firm through the purchase of new capital goods and productive inputs, in which case the acquisition of Technology “incorporated into capital will be discussed. 

Acquisition of Technology not incorporated into Capital: those circumstances in which such incorporation is the result of a research activity carried out either routinely or not outside the firm or at the request of the latter, in which case we will be referring to the acquisition of technology “disincorporated or not incorporated into capital”.

Free technology: Public domain technology, which can be accessed without restrictions. Knowledge is available in full.

Core technology: A set of knowledge that are essential, inherent, specific, specific to a project, service, product or administrative technique. Such knowledge characterizes the corresponding activity by way of its basic properties and requirements.

Modern technology: It is the one produced in the last decades. It is not the most advanced.

Obsolete technology: It is the one that has been completely surpassed by another more recent one because the new technology needs less capital, less work or less of the two factors to produce the same.

Peripheral technology: Set of knowledge that are specific to a process, product or service and that are necessary for the use of core technologies; It is related to all knowledge that is not the exclusive domain of a branch of the production of goods or services, but with those that can be applied to many different activities.

Primitive technology: It is one that has been used since ancient times, requires little capital and a lot of manpower. It does not produce large profits, therefore it does not develop the specialization of the workers, nor a rapid growth of capital.

Secret technology: It is one whose knowledge is protected. It is very difficult to have access to it or its cost is very high.

Technology: In its most general meaning, it is the set of ways and ways of doing things or the set of systematized knowledge for the production of a good or a service. Often it is scientific knowledge but also knowledge organized in another way, applied systematically to the production and distribution of goods and services. Technology is the set of knowledge and methods for the design, production and distribution of goods and services, including those incorporated into the means of work, labor, processes, services and organization. Technology is driven by need, by satisfying the needs of society, the economy and business. There is a practice of privatization and restricted access to technological knowledge. Technology is a system of technical knowledge, systematic knowledge of practical or industrial arts; It consists of a series of empirical techniques, traditional knowledge, craftsmanship, skills, skills, procedures and experiences that are not based on science. Technology reflects and is determined both by the technical relations of production and by the social relations of production (it is not neutral), within a given social formation; it constitutes a concrete response to specific social economic conditions.

Trend towards quality: The clarity in the objectives of the innovation, oriented towards the search of the quality of the products and the continuous improvement within the company.

Technology transfer: Technology transmission process (technical knowledge) and its assimilation, adaptation, diffusion and reproduction by a productive device different from the one that generated it. The appropriation of technology includes knowing its nature (process, product, tacit), the effectiveness of legal protection mechanisms (patents, copyright, trademarks, trade secrets, intellectual property) and complementary capabilities (marketing, quality control and support). On sales). The transfer of technology has the following modalities: sale or purchase of machinery and equipment, licensing agreements through which the use of legally owned technology is authorized, Know-How agreements when there are no patents, technical assistance, training, contracts for administration and marketing, research and development services, consulting services, engineering services, “turnkey” contracts, etc. The transfer of technology requires the issuance of a technology contract, an agreement by means of which a transferor discloses to a concessionaire the technology to execute an operation and / or license for the use of technical knowledge. Among the basic characteristics for the transfer of technology are: the degree of complexity, level of maturity, investment, characteristics compared with new technologies and replace, the economic environment, the scientific and technological environment of the country, the company is innovative, information on innovations, benefits expected by the user and the provider, costs, knowledge and legislation, among others.

Internal transfer of technology: It occurs between companies of the same type, by a producer of capital goods or raw materials, by a technical research or information center.

Real technology transfer: It occurs when the technology acquired is received by the country’s scientific and technological structure or by companies that carry out processes of disaggregation, assimilation and adaptation of these to local needs.

Transplantation of technology: Process by which acquired technologies are used without carrying out processes of disaggregation, assimilation or adaptation in them.

Vision: Provides the frame of reference of what the company wants and expects to see in the future. The corporate vision points the way that allows top management to establish the course to achieve the expected development of the organization in the future. It must have dimensions in time, be broad, inclusive, understood by the members of the entire organization, realistic and possible.

Clarifying Concepts: Cultural Marxism vs. CastroChavismo

Cultural Marxism, left. CastroChavismo, right.

 

Out, Imperialism! – Only the People (uncertain) the People. Note the use of People here, similar to People’s Forum, People’s Movement, etc.

 

Differences between #CulturalMarxism and #CastroChavismo:

1. Names of people within the narrative.

2. Places the events occurred.

3. The organizations and agencies involved.

4. The fact that the time period is different.

5. The fact that CastroChavismo has testimonials of involvement and activity.

6. The fact that CastroChavismo has material evidence.

7. The fact that CastroChavismo uses Data Science.

8. The fact that CastroChavismo analyzes Primary Documents.

9. The fact that CastroChavismo can be live updated, commented upon, and responded to via Knowledge Management practices.

10. The fact that the CastroChavismo elicits a significantly different conversation about Democracy than the other one given the role of social media

“Cultural Marxism” art was here repurposed to illustrate CastroChavismo.