#Weaponization Of Social Media with “LikeWar”

[hillyreviews]

Understanding The Weaponization Of Social Media with “LikeWar” @ Hilly Reviews

The Weaponization Of Social Media with “LikeWar”: I recently delved into a project exploring the intricate realm of "Social Media's Weaponization". In the pursuit of my research, I immersed myself in the pages of "LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media" penned by Emerson T. Brooking and P. W. Singer. This captivating literary work stands as a cornerstone in its examination of this dynamic and multifaceted domain. Throughout my perusal, I unearthed a plethora of insights ripe for integration into my own endeavors. The tome meticulously dissects its subject matter, offering a wealth of perspectives bound to broaden the intellectual horizons of its audience.

"LikeWar" traces the evolutionary trajectory of social media, tracing its inception as a mere communication tool to its current incarnation as a stage for myriad conflicts. Brooking and Singer meticulously illustrate the impact of digital narratives on politics and society through real-life instances, ranging from ISIS recruitment efforts to Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.

[princesssarcastia]

listen to me. are you listening? tiktok is not uniquely anything when it comes to the internet. it is a tool and a platform like any other, used by all kinds of people—by nearly every kind of person or entity to whom it is available, in fact! and while what the u.s. government is doing right now to force the ownership of the company to change hands is bad and happening for the wrong reasons, to put it mildly—

claiming that the u.s. establishment is interested in shutting down tiktok because its been sooooo good and revolutionary for progressive/left-wing organizing is uhh. horse shit. that's not true. everyone uses tiktok. you, statistically, probably use tiktok. so do some of the congresspeople endorsing legislation that might end in tiktok being banned. so do right-wing influencers and terfs and trad-wives. just like everyone uses every other social media site.

don't fall into that trap of thinking that just because you and the people in your circle use this tool for good, that this tool is only used for good. it is actually just a tool for everyone!

here's an excerpt from a book called, The Wires of War, by Jacob Helberg which, if you're interested in why the u.s. congress is actually pulling this shit with tiktok, is a great read. this excerpt follows a section where Helberg described the role social media played in the Arab Spring in 2011. emphasis mine.

It would be several years before the 2016 election awakened the West to the ways in which the Internet could exploit the vulnerabilities of their societies. But for the autocrats in Bejing, Moscow, and Tehran, the Arab Spring was a technological awakening of their own. Seeing other repressive governments around the world crumble, illiberal regimes in Russia and China accelerated their treatment of the information space as a domain of war. "Tech-illiterate bureaucrats were replaced by a new generation of enforcers who understood the internet almost as well as the protesters," write Singer and Brooking in their book, LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media. "In truth, democratic activists had no special claim to the internet. They'd simply gotten there first. "

[azspot]

Beyond recapping the news, “LikeWar” becomes a compelling read as Brookings and Singer give historical context to today’s news to demystify the Internet as a battlefield. The authors liken the stunning capture of Mosul, Iraq, which the Islamic State publicized far outside the Middle East by bombarding social media, to the unyielding tempo of the German blitzkrieg, which paralyzed French fighters with a relentless broadcast of its attacks. Today’s “sockpuppets,” young Russians who masquerade online as Americans, prove to be nothing more than hipster updates to Cold War tactics deployed by the Soviet Union that targeted the extremes of American politics. The contemporary Russian Gen. Valery Gerasimov, who in 2013 published a treatise ranking nonmilitary means above traditional weapons, is, in the authors’ telling, just a fresh take on the early-19th-century military theorist Carl von Clausewitz. Just as Clausewitz established war as politics by other means, Gerasimov laid out a radical new approach to conflict by taking advantage of the Internet as the ultimate disinformation weapon.

These historical references are where “LikeWar” will succeed best in educating an older, less digitally literate generation about how the Internet shapes modern warfare. In this way, the Internet will no longer appear a brave new world unfamiliar to baby boomers but another iteration of the same old conflicts.

But if Clausewitz crops up as a motif that grounds the book in staid military doctrine, references to pop stars and reality television celebrities keep the text out of the realm of the typical think tank fare. It may seem a cheap bid for younger readers at first, but the authors draw smart and eerie parallels between terrorist groups and seemingly vapid celebrities. Even Vladi­mir Putin’s longtime media adviser admires the social media savvy of Kim Kardashian, who can direct millions of her supporters without the KGB.

[thecyberwire]

Special Edition — Peter W. Singer author of LikeWar

In this CyberWire special edition, an extended version of our conversation from earlier this year with Peter W. Singer. We spoke not long after the publication of his book, Like War - the Weaponization of Social Media.

Thanks to our special edition sponsors, McAfee.

Check out this episode!

[wdgrrw]

Read LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media PDF BY P.W. Singer

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by P.W. Singer.

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Description

Two defense experts explore the collision of war, politics, and social media, where the most important battles are now only a click away. Through the weaponization of social media, the internet is changing war and politics, just as war and politics are changing the internet. Terrorists livestream their attacks, “Twitter wars” produce real‑world casualties, and viral misinformation alters not just the result of battles, but the very fate of nations. The result is that war, tech, and politics have blurred into a new kind of battlespace that plays out on our smartphones. P. W. Singer and Emerson Brooking tackle the mind‑bending questions that arise when war goes online and the online world goes to war. They explore how ISIS copies the Instagram tactics of Taylor Swift, a former World of Warcraft addict foils war crimes thousands of miles away, internet trolls shape elections, and China uses a smartphone app to police the thoughts of 1.4 billion citizens. What can be kept secret in a

[cultml]

As it all played out, we were reminded of one more piece of wisdom Flynn had imparted to us before his downfall. He’d spoken of the importance of piercing through the “fog” of the modern information environment; of getting to the “golden nuggets” of actionable intelligence that lurked in the mists. The right bit of data was already out there, he explained. You just had to know where to look.

The general was right. The internet has indeed exposed the golden nuggets—the truth—for anyone to find. But, as his story also shows, scattered among these bits of truth is “fool’s gold” cleverly engineered to distract or even destroy us. It is harder than ever to keep a secret. It is also harder than ever to separate the truth from lies. But it is becoming easier to turn those lies into weapons.

[jhavelikes]

Two defense experts explore the collision of war, politics, and social media, where the most important battles are now only a click away. Through the weaponization of social media, the internet is changing war and politics, just as war and politics are changing the internet. Terrorists livestream their attacks, “Twitter wars” produce real‑world casualties, and viral misinformation alters not just the result of battles, but the very fate of nations. The result is that war, tech, and politics have blurred into a new kind of battlespace that plays out on our smartphones.

LikeWar – The Weaponization of Social Media

[scholarlysoldier]

The best time of year is finally here bringing all of its pretty Fall colours and spookiness with it, so I may as well share the last of my summer reading. This haul includes everything from August to the end of September. Over that time I read the following: 1. Men at Arms by Steven Pressfield (2021) 2. Steel my Soldier’s Hearts by Col David Hackworth (2002) 3. The Red Badge of Courage by Stephane Crane (1895) 4. LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media by Emerson T. Brooking and P. W. Singer (2018) 5. Beartown by Fredrik Backman (2016) 6. The Fighting Canadians by David Bercuson (2008) 7. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway (1940) 8. Why We Sleep by Mathew Walker (2017) 9. The Great Mortality by John Kelly (2005) 10. Outlaw Platoon by Sean Parnell (2012) 11. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (2011) 12. Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger (1920) 13. The Obstacle is the War by Ryan Holiday (2014) #bookstagram #augustreads #septemberreads #fallreads #2021readingchallenge #menatarms #stevenpressfield #steelmysoldiershearts #davidhackworth #theredbadgeofcourage #stephancrane #likewar #emersonbooking #pwsinger #beartown #fredrickbackman #thefightingcanadians #forwhomthebelltolls #earnesthemingway #whywesleep #mathewwalker #thegreatmortality #johnkelly #outlawplatoon #seanparnell #thesongofachilles #madelinemiller #stormofsteel #theobstacleistheway #ryanholiday (at Village of Port Williams) https://www.instagram.com/p/CUvpIMhJJmHsk1i-rEKkTva-8BV7Fr-7wOJ52A0/?utm_medium=tumblr

[prof-ghada-amer]

جملة رائعة ذكرت في كتاب📚

LikeWar: The #Weaponization of Social Media

تشرح كيفية عمل أداه من أدوات #الحروب_اللامتماثلة وهي:

"إن مهاجمة أهم مركز ثقل للخصم ــ روح شعبه ــ لم تعد تتطلب عمليات قصف ضخمة أو دعاية. كل ما يتطلبه الأمر هو هاتف ذكي وبضع ثوان ٍ للتحضير لمهمة. ويمكن لأي شخص أن يفعل ذلك"🧐🤯

#التكنولوجيا #الحروب_الحديثة #الدفاع #الحروب_النفسية #العمليات_النفسية #غادة_عامر

#technology #Asymetricwarfare #Futurewarfare #socialmedia

[plusorminuscongress]

New story in Politics from Time: The Information War Over Trump’s Impeachment

When a White House whistleblower reported that Donald Trump asked a foreign nation to “do us a favor” if it wanted U.S. military aid, it didn’t just start an impeachment. It started a war playing out on your screens that could determine the outcome.

Over the last generation, nations, militaries, businesses, and political parties have all come to grips with the threat of computer networks being hacked, commonly thought of as “cyberwar.”

Yet these efforts to steal information now come with a twin that tries to spread it, often with even more powerful results. As illustration, while the DNC may have been famously hacked during the 2016 election of greater import was that over half the US population in 2016 was unknowingly exposed to Russian propaganda via their Facebook accounts. Indeed, as a bipartisan Senate report revealed last week, Russian information warriors literally celebrated their success with a toast of champagne. If “cyberwar” is the hacking of networks, this kind of “likewar” is the hacking of people on them, by driving ideas viral through likes, shares, and sometimes lies.

Just as in 2016, we’re now seeing all the elements of likewar deployed into the battle over impeachment. Supporters of the president have funded crowdsourced manhunts, mining the web for clues to the whistleblower’s identity. If they are found, any tiny nuggets in their background will then be weaponized, not just to try to discredit them via some unrelated belief or gaffe posted years back, but to threaten them and their family. Indeed, the risk of violence has been already been massively spurred on by the loudest voice on social media of all, who described the whistleblower and then those supporting impeachment as committing a crime punishable by death. Given the history of past mass killers echoing Trump’s words, this falls somewhere between a direct call to violence and what is known as “stochastic terrorism,” where you create the supporting conditions for it.

In turn, opponents of the president are engaged in their own online hunt for open-source intelligence of a kind even the CIA found hard to collect a decade back. Networks of anti-Trump activists are mining everything from old Pentagon documents on delayed missile deliveries to the travel history of Ukrainian oligarchs to see when and where they crossed paths with Rudy Giuliani and even Jared Kushner.

While truth may be surfaced by these dueling hunts, the response to it is to follow the lessons of Russian information warfare: bury it underneath a sea of lies. Online warfare is fought not by consistency, but a constantly altering set of explanations and “alternative facts.” The day by day shift of the contents of the infamous call or whether Giuliani was acting as the president’s personal lawyer or not is a deliberate feature not a bug. Russia may have pioneered this tactic (such as how it responded to to its 2014 shootdown of the airliner over Ukraine, by pushing out a dozen different conflicting stories in its defense ) but it is now the new normal in our own politics, appearing in everything from the impeachment debate (where the President and his staff have said he did and didn’t demand a quid pro quo with Ukraine, with his chief of staff Mick Mulvaney literally providing both versions over the course of mere hours) to the Syria withdrawal (where the President has pushed out at least a half dozen different explanations for why he did and didn’t greenlight the Turkish invasion and abandonment of America’s Kurdish allies). Simply put, if you can muddy the waters enough, then you might just be able to daze and confuse your audience into submission, or at least just have them think that “both sides” are the same.

In these battles for virality, all the familiar tactics and tools are being deployed. The whistleblower’s memo has already been turned into a series of gifs, using Internet memes like scenes from Anchorman, to leverage web culture to help it take off. In turn, opponents to the memo are leaning into classic conspiracy theories to try to undermine its spread, such as the old stand-by that somehow George Soros and the “globalists” (I.E. the Jews) are involved. Even the efforts to push out multiple competing hashtagged names for the affair are part of an effort to keep it from coalescing in the public mind. As long as there is no equivalent to #watergate , there is no single way for the public to unite around it.

This back and forth can be shrugged off as mere online games, but the effect is real. What shapes social media shapes not just what you see on your screen, and then share with your friends and family to echo out repeatedly wider. It also shapes what happens on other media, with over 90% of journalists regularly using social media for their work. What trends online, even if artificially driven, helps influence everything from what stories newspaper reporters pursue to which guests radio show producers book.

Again and again, we have seen how an influence operation-shaped shift in online trends and then perceptions can shape elections (ranging from Brazil to Brexit) to even congressional votes. Indeed, almost exactly one year ago it swung the hearings for Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh. When Kavanaugh was accused of sexual assault by Christine Blasey Ford, an obscure Internet conspiracy theory that mixed was created in his defense, that Kavanaugh somehow had a doppelganger, who had actually committed the sexual assault. It was originally mocked and even led to its originator to resign his job from a DC thinktank in shame. Yet, as the theory subsequently went viral, it gave moderate Republican senators a narrative to vote to confirm Kavanaugh, without explicitly calling his accuser a liar. The same model may have already happened in the looming battle over impeachment, where a false claim that the “deep state” secretly altered U.S. whistleblower law first popped in online conservative forms. Despite being debunked repeatedly, it has gone viral with amplifying repeats by the President and GOP House Leader Kevin McCarthy.

The next few weeks will be a crucial moment for American democracy. As the battle over impeachment plays out, we all need to wise up to this online war that is targeting each of us. Both the public and media need to understand its features and be careful to distinguish when something is organic and when both we and the algorithms of the networks are being played with. Most of all, we need to recognize our own power and responsibility. It will be us who will ultimately determine if it is veracity or virality that matters most in our democracy.

By P.W. Singer on October 19, 2019 at 07:00AM

[cyber-front-blog]

How social media became a weapon of war

What Taylor Swift and ISIS can teach us about cyberwar.

By Sean Illing

We live in a world of bots and trolls and curated news feeds, in which reality is basically up for grabs.

A new book titled LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media explores how this is transforming our culture and upending the old rules of politics and even war. In it, authors Peter W. Singer and Emerson Brooking argue that the distinctions between entertainment and politics, war and peace, and even civilian and soldier are gradually disappearing.

Social media, the authors claim, is now the site of a globe-spanning information conflict being waged by millions of people in dozens of countries across a variety of platforms. It’s changing how we think, how we acquire information, and how we make sense of the world around us. And it has created what they call a global “battle space” in which pop stars like Taylor Swift and terror groups like ISIS use the same tactics to fight for your attention online.

I spoke with Singer, a leading expert on 21st-century security issues, about the implications of these changes, and why tech companies have so far failed to take responsibility for the platforms they’ve created.

A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.

Sean Illing

What is social media doing to us?

Peter W. Singer

Social media has simultaneously connected us and disconnected us. Whether we’re talking about our personal lives or politics or wars, there are no longer any gatekeepers; we can all collect information and share it. And so we’re empowered in a way we couldn’t be previously.

But it’s also meant that we’re constantly being pulled in a thousand different directions, usually away from what’s most important, and that we can be manipulated, because all of this information is being dumped onto a few massive platforms that are designed to make money above all else. What it’s created is really akin to a battle space for attention and manipulation.

Sean Illing

You use the phrase “battle space” very deliberately, and much of your book is about how social media has become a weapon of war. Is it now the cheapest and most effective weapon?

Peter W. Singer

The internet began as a place for scientists to share computer time, then it quickly got repurposed into a social medium. But by creating this tool of mass connection, it became the nervous system of everything from commerce to news, and like everything else, it’s weaponized.

Very soon, it’s being used by everything from terrorist groups to online fans of Kanye West and Taylor Swift, all of whom see it as a way to achieve their goals. Whether it’s to recruit or change the conversation or narrative to their benefit, or to gather intelligence that can be used to guide physical operations, the internet is this incredibly cheap and diverse tool. And regardless of who’s using it, it basically follows the same rules.

Is the internet the most effective or powerful weapon? In some cases, it clearly has been. Some nations have used it to achieve the traditional goals of war without ever having to fire a bullet. And some nations, like Russia, get it in ways other nations, like America, don’t. And that’s why Russia has been so successful at advancing their interests in the last couple of years.

Sean Illing

Is Russia the best at this cyber game?

Peter W. Singer

They’re definitely top of the class right now, but it’s not just Russia. ISIS is another big winner in this space. Their mastery of social media was essential to their rise to the top of the terrorism game, surpassing al-Qaeda and the like. People look at ISIS and they wonder how a group with a seventh-century worldview could become so popular today, and the answer is that they’re really good at using 21st-century technology.

So when ISIS decided to invade Mosul in June 2014, what do they do? They announce it with a hashtag. Like Russia, they understand the rules of the game: that the world is watching, that you can’t keep things a secret, so you should embrace it and use social media to turn your own message into a viral campaign.

Sean Illing

I don’t think our society can adapt quickly enough to these technological changes — they’re running so far ahead of our laws and culture and institutions that we’re essentially hostage to them.

Peter W. Singer

I don’t know if I’d use the word “hostage,” but we definitely have a problem. All of this has happened in the last 10 years or so, and you have this new battle space that’s very hard for people to wrap their heads around.

In the book, we interview one of the leading political campaign experts about the 2016 election, and he talks about how, by all the known rules, Trump should not have won. There were too many competitors, he had no newspaper endorsements, hardly any campaign offices, fewer TV ads, etc. But those were the old rules, and in the age of the internet, they don’t apply anymore.

So we need new rules, and that also applies to each of us as individuals. Because if you don’t understand all the ways you’re being distracted and manipulated by social media and the internet, you’re going to be a mark. If you’re online, you’re constantly under assault by people looking to monetize your attention or your outrage or whatever the case may be.

Our entire country was caught off guard in 2016, and that’s why Russia was able to cause such chaos in our society. If we don’t recognize how much the world has changed, we won’t be able to protect ourselves. Because the world has changed, and it will keep changing at a faster and faster rate.

Sean Illing

You use the phrase “unreality machine” in the book to describe social media’s essential function. Is that the political utility of social media now — to manufacture reality?

Peter W. Singer

You can use social media to achieve your goals, whatever those goals might be. And for many groups, it is literally to create a new reality, because the target audience derives its understanding of the world — not just the news, but the way it frames the world — from what it views through social media.

So in many ways, it’s a flip on the old adage that you can’t have your own facts. Actually, you can have your own facts now, and what’s scary is that all the factors driving social media, including the algorithms and the marketplace, reward this kind of thinking. So everyone who uses social media, whether it’s individual self-promoters or companies or terrorist groups or partisan news outlets, is leveraging it for their own goals.

Sean Illing

The odd thing about social media is that, on the one hand, it has reduced everything to theater, where it’s all about performance and branding, and yet, on the other hand, it has raised the stakes and made it easier to spread actual violence and chaos across the globe. I don’t think we’re close to figuring out how to navigate this tension.

Peter W. Singer

One of the challenges of this book was trying to deal with the duality you’re pointing to. We tried to pepper it with scenes and characters that are genuinely scary, like the failed rapper who is radicalized online and becomes one of ISIS’s top recruiters; but we also show the good side of online life, like a Muslim American woman who created what she jokingly calls Dumbledore’s Army, which is this group of teens who go after extremists online using their own tactics and language — and frankly, they’re doing a better job than the State Department.

The second part of what you said really cuts to the heart of why the technology companies have had such a difficult time. In many ways, it’s like they’re going through the stages of grief over what happened to their babies. They’ve created these platforms that they effectively lost control of, and now they’re coming to grips with the consequences. But the contradictions persist, and I’m not sure they’re truly facing up to the realities.

Sean Illing

Can you give me an example of what you mean there?

Peter W. Singer

Take Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. Right after the 2016 election, he kept insisting that disinformation couldn’t have swayed the election — and he was making comments like this while at the same time telling political campaigns that Facebook is the best place for you to spend your money to influence people’s votes. So there is still a kind of denialism at these tech companies.

So we’re in this bizarre situation in which a handful of tech geeks are some of the most powerful actors in war and politics, because they control the platforms that literally set the rules of the new game. And they never set out to be in this role and aren’t particularly interested in war and politics, and yet they’re the deciders in a way that was previously unthinkable.

Sean Illing

I recently interviewed Eric Weinstein, a mathematician and a managing director of Peter Thiel’s investment firm. He made the case that technology, the child of capitalism, might ultimately be its destroyer. Do you think the same could be said about the internet and liberal democracy?

Peter W. Singer

That’s a great question. We live in a system of government that is a child of the Enlightenment, which was made possible by the printing press. Today, we’re finding it increasingly difficult to keep up with the changes not just in our politics but in our broader information ecosystem.

But we have to remember that the argument can go both ways. For all the bad examples of how social media has been weaponized and used to weaken democracies, there are also examples of how it’s allowed a level of citizen involvement that hasn’t been possible since the time of ancient Athens.

Local governments are using it to engage citizens in new and creative ways, and national governments like Switzerland and Australia are incorporating it in interesting ways as well. And it wasn’t that long ago that social media was credited with inspiring the Arab Spring.

The bottom line is that these technologies are here to stay, so we have to adapt and learn to live with them. We have to develop 21st-century approaches to everything from voting to commerce to citizenship, and we have to defend ourselves against external attacks. We simply don’t have a choice.

Sean Illing

You end the book with a plea to tech giants like Twitter and Facebook, asking them to do a better job of policing their platforms. But that seems unrealistic to me, since their entire business model rests on turning users into products for advertisers, and that will always trump any commitment they have to democratic norms or civil discourse.

Do you really believe they have the will to make these changes, even if doing so means sacrificing the bottom line?

Peter W. Singer

Well, that last part is the caveat, because I think these companies are starting to ask themselves if allowing their customers to be targeted is actually good for the bottom line. In the end, these companies cannot avoid being drawn into issues of politics and war and propaganda, because that’s what their platforms are being used for. It’s not in their DNA to get involved in this way, but this is where they are, and they know that governments will eventually intervene if they don’t deal with these problems.

What they can’t do, and what they’ve done in the past, is assume that technology is somehow going to solve our political problems. This is a cycle they’ve been caught in for years, and it’s obviously not working. They have to recognize that these platforms are not merely for-profit enterprises; they’re also the nervous system for our personal and professional and political lives, and they have a responsibility to treat them accordingly.

So what we ask for in the book is totally reasonable. It’s fine to beta-test a product like a restaurant-rating app by pushing it out in the world and just seeing what happens, but that’s not fine when it’s a product that the world depends on and is likely to be used in crime and violence and war. They need to do what the military often does, which is war-game a scenario ahead of time and anticipate all the bad things that can happen, and develop responses to them.

This is their civic responsibility, and they can’t bury their heads in the sand any longer.

[itunesbooks]

LikeWar - P. W. Singer & Emerson T. Brooking

LikeWar The Weaponization of Social Media P. W. Singer & Emerson T. Brooking Genre: World Affairs Price: $15.99 Publish Date: October 2, 2018 Publisher: HMH Books Seller: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company Two defense experts explore the collision of war, politics, and social media, where the most important battles are now only a click away. Through the weaponization of social media, the internet is changing war and politics, just as war and politics are changing the internet. Terrorists livestream their attacks, “Twitter wars” produce real‑world casualties, and viral misinformation alters not just the result of battles, but the very fate of nations. The result is that war, tech, and politics have blurred into a new kind of battlespace that plays out on our smartphones. P. W. Singer and Emerson Brooking tackle the mind‑bending questions that arise when war goes online and the online world goes to war. They explore how ISIS copies the Instagram tactics of Taylor Swift, a former World of Warcraft addict foils war crimes thousands of miles away, internet trolls shape elections, and China uses a smartphone app to police the thoughts of 1.4 billion citizens. What can be kept secret in a world of networks? Does social media expose the truth or bury it? And what role do ordinary people now play in international conflicts? Delving into the web’s darkest corners, we meet the unexpected warriors of social media, such as the rapper turned jihadist PR czar and the Russian hipsters who wage unceasing infowars against the West. Finally, looking to the crucial years ahead, LikeWar outlines a radical new paradigm for understanding and defending against the unprecedented threats of our networked world.    http://bit.ly/2EuFOSi

[profitdigger4-blog]

Meet the Philadelphians on Forbes 30 Under 30 List for 2019

The young honorees are being recognized for big accomplishments across industries like media, energy, healthcare, and finance.

Every Thursday, get the latest dispatches from Philly’s business and innovation community delivered right to your inbox.

The Kitu Life founders on Shark Tank. Sunniva Super Coffee rebranded as Kitu Life in September. Courtesy photo.

Forbes honored a new group of 600 young innovators and entrepreneurs last week with the release of its 2019 30 Under 30 class. The highly anticipated list recognizes 30 different young people in 20 different categories, including sciences, consumer technologies, arts, sports, and food.

According to Forbes, this year’s class was selected from nearly 15,000 online submissions, which corresponds to a four percent acceptance rate. Of those selected, Forbes reported that 19 percent are immigrants, 38 percent identify as first-generation citizens, and over half the list are founders or co-founders of their own companies.

Among these diverse change-makers, a handful of people who live and/or recently studied in the Philadelphia region made the list. Here are their Forbes profiles broken down by category:

Food and Drink

Kitu Life founders Jim, Jake and Jordan DeCicco Attended the former Philadelphia University

“Tired of unhealthy bottled energy drinks, Jim, Jake, and Jordan DeCicco created Kitu in Jordan’s Philadelphia University dorm room. Inspired by the ketogenic diet, they brew organic Colombian coffee blended with lactose-free protein and MCT oil from coconuts instead of milk and sugar. With only 80 calories and zero sugar, Super Coffee worked so well for the brothers that that Jim left his career on Wall Street and Jordan dropped out of school, forfeiting his full scholarship, to accept the Peter Thiel Fellowship. The DeCicco brothers were featured on ABC’s Shark Tank in February, and their Super Coffee and line of creamers are distributed in chains like Wegmans, Whole Foods and Fairway. With $5 million in funding, they saw about $1 million in revenue last year.”

Enterprise Technology

Lauren Smith Philadelphia resident

If you call an Uber, geotag a Tweet, or match with someone on Tinder, you’re probably using Foursquare. Originally hired as a right-hand doer and thought partner to CEO Jeff Glueck and now heading up Strategy for the company-at-large, Smith’s role is finding the gaps and opportunities in the business, and ensure the company executes against those ambitions. Since the Yale grad joined in 2014, the company has grown to ~2x the team size, earning ~4x the revenue and leveraging ~15x the data assets.

Healthcare

Proscia founders David West, Nathan Buchbinder, Coleman Stavish Philadelphia residents

“David West and Nathan Buchbinder, two students at Johns Hopkins, joined up with West’s friend since kindergarten, Coleman Stavish, to start a company that uses artificial intelligence to speed up pathology tests for cancer patients. They’ve raised $10.4 million from investors including Flybridge Capital, Robin Hood Ventures and Fusion Fund.”

Finance

Charlie Javice Attended University of Pennsylvania

“Frank’s software aims to make the application process for student loans faster and easier. Javice founded the 15-person startup in 2016. She has since raised $16 million, and Frank has helped 300,000 users apply for financial aid.”

Peter Maa Attended University of Pennsylvania

“Most senior macroeconomic researcher at $9.5 billion in assets PointState Capital, where he oversees the firm’s fundamental discretionary macro research. Also is building the firm’s in-house data science team, helping to manage a team of analysts. Reports to founder Zachary Schreiber.”

Becky Painter Attended Swarthmore College

“Portfolio manager of Fidelity’s Select Leisure Fund, which has $470 million of assets. Also an analyst on Fidelity’s Consumer Team, covering large cap restaurants, hotels, casinos, online travel agents, and other “leisure” stocks. Has been a part of Fidelity’s “honor roll” list for analysts every year since joining the firm.”

Anish Pathipati Attended University of Pennsylvania

“Most senior investment professional at buyout legend Glenn Hutchins’ new investment firm. Managing a $900 million investment in Virtu and a big crypto portfolio. Previously worked at Silver Lake and Brave Warrior, where he led $300 million investment in HCA.”

Jordan Zarrilli Attended University of Pennsylvania

“Runs financials equity derivatives trading at Goldman, overseeing risk on the derivatives desk for financials and consumer companies. Previously worked for four years as an equities derivatives trader at UBS.”

Law and Policy

Emerson Brooking Attended University of Pennsylvania

“Former Council on Foreign Relations fellow Emerson Brooking’s debut book LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media (about just that) made The New York Times’ New & Noteworthy list, Amazon’s Best Seller list and was named an Amazon Best Book of the Month. Brooking’s expertise on the matter has made him a leading cyber warfare pundit.”

Olivia Ensign Attended Swarthmore College

“A descendant of slaves and product of the great migration, Olivia Ensign is an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union Capital Punishment Project fighting systemic racism in capital-punishment. She represents death-row clients in the appeals and post-conviction levels across the southern United States.”

Manufacturing and Industry

Ryan Knopf Attended University of Pennsylvania

“Ryan Knopf cofounded Root AI, which develops intelligent robotic systems to harvest fruits and vegetables in indoor farms and has raised $2.3 million from investors. The company’s first product is a mobile robot that can pick tomatoes and assess their health. It is now testing its robot prototypes in six indoor farms across the United States and Canada.”

Media

Justin R. Ching Attended University of Pennsylvania

“Justin R. Ching, who began his career with YouTube Originals, helping launch channels like VICE, has produced shows for Fox and Amazon, most recently the NFL docuseries “Ritual,” and he has an Asian-American docuseries in the works for Food Network. Through his production company, j-school, he aims to empower underrepresented groups to tell their own stories.”

Energy

Seth Neele Philadelphia resident

“With a doctorate in statistics and machine learning from Penn, Neel and his team apply A.I. to public data on Latin American oilfields to produce production forecasts. Early clients include oil supermajors and private equity firms.”

Source: https://www.phillymag.com/business/2018/11/19/forbes-30-under-30-philadelphia-2/

[allaroundmelbourne]

Facebook looking to integrate Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram: sources

Those apps all have separate messaging systems currently. Integrating them could keep users within Facebook's ecosystem -- it paid $US19 billion ($26.5 billion) for WhatsApp in 2014 and $US1 billion for Instagram in 2012. That integration would not only increase user activity within Facebook's applications, but also give the company potential revenue generating opportunities through increased ad sales and new services, sources told the Times. Loading Such synergy could connect billions of users and, perhaps, impact competitors such as Apple and Google. Facebook has about 1.5 billion daily active users, while WhatsApp, the world's most popular messaging app, has 1.5 billion users. About 500 million use Instagram daily; 800 million use it at least once a month. "We want to build the best messaging experiences we can; and people want messaging to be fast, simple, reliable and private," Facebook said in a statement to USA TODAY. "We're working on making more of our messaging products end-to-end encrypted and considering ways to make it easier to reach friends and family across networks. As you would expect, there is a lot of discussion and debate as we begin the long process of figuring out all the details of how this will work." But users input different information to use the apps -- personal information such as name, age, relationship status, work history are used on Facebook and to a lesser extent, Instagram, while a cell phone number is used for WhatsApp. Facebook's ability to compile a more robust user profile across the three messaging services could raise concerns. The company continues to face criticism over the Cambridge Analytica scandal, involving a U.K. political firm and exposure of personal data of an estimated 87 million Americans to manipulation for political purposes during the 2016 election. Facebook in November 2018 also said it had removed 85 accounts on Instagram and 30 on Facebook that the company feared were linked to Russian operatives and were covertly orchestrating online activity on the eve of the U.S. midterm elections.

Facebook paid $US19 billion for WhatsApp. Credit:Bloomberg WhatsApp has had issues, too. The assailant in March 2017's London terror attacks that killed four and wounded dozens more reportedly used WhatsApp. And last week, WhatsApp said it would limit the number of recipients in forwarded messages to five, down from 20. That came after India experienced violence last summer after viral hoax messages resulted in more than a dozen lynchings, CNN reported. WhatsApp said it decided to move forward after a six-month test of the five-recipient limit in India. Facebook had been testing the five-forwarding limit in the country after it experienced violence last summer after viral hoax messages resulted in more than a dozen lynchings, CNN reported. When Facebook acquired WhatsApp and Instagram, Zuckerberg said those companies would remain independent. In recent months, the co-founders of those apps have departed as concerns over the Cambridge Analytica scandal shook consumer confidence in Facebook. WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton, who left the company last year to start a foundation, urged people to delete their Facebook accounts in March 2018 over privacy concerns and gave an push to the #DeleteFacebook movement. WhatsApp CEO and co-founder Jan Koum left a month later. Instagram's co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger resigned in September 2018 and the sources told the Times that internal concerns about Facebook's growing designs led to their departures. WhatsApp employees have also raised concerns about the plan on internal message boards and during a staff meeting last month, the Times reported. Facebook's plan to integrate messaging across the three services could lead to additional scrutiny from lawmakers, which last year called Zuckerberg and other executives from Twitter and Google to testify before Congress. The move could put too much messaging power in the hands of one company, suggests Peter Singer, co-author of LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media. While an integration would help Facebook align its policies, it could suggest "monopoly concerns," he said in a post on Twitter Friday. USA Today Most Viewed in Technology Loading https://www.theage.com.au/technology/facebook-looking-to-integrate-messenger-whatsapp-and-instagram-sources-20190126-p50ts6.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed

[new-books-at-spscc]

Likewar : the weaponization of social media P. W. Singer (Peter Warren)

[euteh]

LikeWars: How business leaders can prepare for this growing threat

LikeWars: How business leaders can prepare for this growing threat

Authors of the book LikeWar detail how social media can be weaponized. Read the questions they recommend business leaders ask and answer in preparation for a LikeWar.

Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto

In their book LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media, political…