Speed dating, and matchmaking via Zoom, in Japan

The Washington Post has the story:

Lockdowns make the heart grow fonder in Japan as online matchmaking surges
By Simon Denyer and Akiko Kashiwagi   July 12, 2020

"Online matchmaking in Japan has become a rare upbeat counterpoint to the economic slowdowns, shutdowns and restrictions during the covid-19 crisis.

"Matchmaking agencies say the video encounters have proved to be a hit, removing the pressures of arranged face-to-face sessions in a society that often discourages being bold and open in first meetings.
...
"LMO and other companies tend to start with a group meeting conducted over Zoom: An emcee makes everyone comfortable, helps them introduce themselves and asks them a few questions to spark conversation. How have you been being spending your time at home? How do you imagine married life to be? What are your dreams? Then participants pair off into breakout rooms and spend several minutes chatting to each prospective partner in turn."

Blockchain economics, by Catalini and Gans; and Halaburda, Haeringer, Gans and Gandal

Some Simple Economics of the Blockchain
By Christian Catalini and Joshua S. Gans
Communications of the ACM, July 2020, Vol. 63 No. 7, Pages 80-90

"we rely on economic theory to explain how two key costs affected by blockchain technology—the cost of verification of state, and the cost of networking—change the types of transactions that can be supported in the economy. These costs have implications for the design and efficiency of digital platforms, and open opportunities for new approaches to data ownership, privacy, and licensing; monetization of digital content; auctions and reputation systems."
***********

The Microeconomics of Cryptocurrencies
Hanna Halaburda, Guillaume Haeringer, Joshua S. Gans, Neil Gandal
NBER Working Paper No. 27477  July 2020

Abstract: Since its launch in 2009 much has been written about Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies and blockchains. While the discussions initially took place mostly on blogs and other popular media, we now are witnessing the emergence of a growing body of rigorous academic research on these topics. By the nature of the phenomenon analyzed, this research spans many academic disciplines including macroeconomics, law and economics and computer science. This survey focuses on the microeconomics of cryptocurrencies themselves. What drives their supply, demand, trading price and competition amongst them. This literature has been emerging over the past decade and the purpose of this paper is to summarize its main findings so as to establish a base upon which future research can be conducted.

Coronavirus information, mis-information, conspiracy theories, web search, and social media

The coronavirus / Covid-19 pandemic is constantly generating new information, and misinformation.  How to separate them?

A number of social media sites, and Google, have decided not to rely on their organic recommender systems. So e.g. if you search for "coronavirus" in Google, you get what appear to be all curated sites (e.g. government and University sources, and major newspapers), and if you google "coronavirus conspiracy theories" you get news stories about some of the craziness out there, but not the first hand insanity.

The Guardian has this story:

Tech giants struggle to stem 'infodemic' of false coronavirus claims

"Click over to Google, type in “coronavirus”, and press enter.

"The results you see will bear little resemblance to any other search.

"There are no ads, no product recommendations, and no links to websites that have figured out how to win the search engine optimisation game. Government, NGO and mainstream media sources dominate.

"Algorithms and user-generated content are out; gatekeepers and fact checking are in.
...
"Across the social web – on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, Instagram and Pinterest – search results related to Covid-19 are similarly predetermined.

"Instagram delivers a pop-up urging US users to go to the website for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) – or UK users to the NHS – rather than look at the memes and pictures tagged with #coronavirus.

"On Facebook, a dedicated “Information Center” includes a mix of curated information and official medical advice. On Pinterest, the only infographics and memes to be found on topics such as “Covid-19” or “hydroxychloroquine” are those made by internationally recognised health organisations, such as the WHO.
...
"Another complicating factor is that normally trustworthy sources are not providing reliable information.

“We’ve seen the US government, particularly the White House, becoming a significant purveyor of misinformation around the virus,” Bergstrom said.

Facebook and Twitter have removed posts by prominent and powerful people over coronavirus misinformation, including the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, but the real test of their resolve will be whether they ever take action against misinformation by Trump."
*********

Here's another story, concerning a particular conspiracy theory:

Facebook acts to halt far-right groups linking Covid-19 to 5G

"Facebook has stepped up efforts to stop the promotion of baseless conspiracy theories linking Covid-19 to 5G, after research highlighted a “toxic cocktail” of far-right-influenced groups pushing the idea alongside incitement to attack telecommunications infrastructure.

"Groups in the UK promoting the conspiracy theory on Facebook – often linking it to explicitly antisemitic messages – have been growing at a significant rate, warned the campaign group Hope not Hate.

"The largest group in the UK, Stop 5G UK, added almost 3,000 members in just 24 hours from 6-7 April while another, Direct Action Against 5G, gained more than 1,400 members in its first week after it was created on 31 March"

The Power of Experiments by Mike Luca and Max Bazerman

New this month from MIT Press, a history and guide to experiments in (mostly) online businesses:

The Power of Experiments

Decision Making in a Data-Driven World

By Michael Luca and Max H. Bazerman

"How organizations—including Google, StubHub, Airbnb, and Facebook—learn from experiments in a data-driven world."

My blurb says: "Luca and Bazerman's The Power of Experiments will open your eyes about how to distill information from data."

Hal Varian's blurb says: "One of the great things about e-commerce is that it is far easier to run experiments online than offline. As more and more companies move online, they need to learn how to use this powerful tool. This book shows how to take advantage of experiments and how this will revolutionize business, both online and off."

Susan Athey's says: "This accessible and engaging book provides an excellent introduction to a subject that every young person entering the business world today should understand—experimentation. The case studies draw the reader into the challenges that arise in practice, highlighting issues ranging from bias to ethics to unintended consequences."

And the draft I read was fun and easy to read.  This might be the book to spend time with while you're sheltering in place.

Can YouTube's recommender engine tone down conspiracy theories?

The NY Times has the story:

Can YouTube Quiet Its Conspiracy Theorists?
A new study examines YouTube’s efforts to limit the spread of conspiracy theories on its site, from videos claiming the end times are near to those questioning climate change. By Jack Nicas

"In January 2019, YouTube said it would limit the spread of videos “that could misinform users in harmful ways.”

"One year later, YouTube recommends conspiracy theories far less than before. But its progress has been uneven and it continues to advance certain types of fabrications, according to a new study from researchers at University of California, Berkeley.

"YouTube’s efforts to curb conspiracy theories pose a major test of Silicon Valley’s ability to combat misinformation, particularly ahead of this year’s elections. The study, which examined eight million recommendations over 15 months, provides one of the clearest pictures yet of that fight, and the mixed findings show how challenging the issue remains for tech companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter."
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The paper referred to seems to be this one on Hany Farid's website at Berkeley. It's very recent ("compiled on March 2, 2020," the day of the NY Times story, and e.g. it finds that corona virus conspiracy videos are not being recommended despite being readily available). 

A longitudinal analysis of YouTube’s promotion of conspiracy videos
Marc Faddoul, Guillaume Chaslot, and Hany Farid


Abstract: Conspiracy  theories  have  flourished  on  social  media,  raising  concerns that such content is fueling the spread of disinformation, sup-porting extremist ideologies, and in some cases, leading to violence. Under increased scrutiny and pressure from legislators and the public, YouTube announced efforts to change their recommendation algorithms so that the most egregious conspiracy videos are demoted and demonetized.  To verify this claim, we have developed a classifier for automatically determining if a video is conspiratorial (e.g., the moon landing was faked, the pyramids of Giza were built by aliens, end of the world prophecies, etc.). We coupled this classifier with an emulation of YouTube’s watch-next algorithm on more than a thousand popular informational channels to obtain a year-long picture of the videos actively promoted by YouTube.  We also obtained trends of the so-called filter-bubble effect for conspiracy theories


And here are the concluding paragraphs:

"Summary. The overall reduction of conspiratorial recommendations is an encouraging trend. Nonetheless, this reduction does not make the problem of radicalization on YouTube obsolete nor fictional, as some have claimed (41). Aggregatedata hide very different realities for individuals, and although radicalization is a serious issue, it is only relevant for a fraction of the users. Those with a history of watching conspiratorial content can certainly still experience YouTube as filter-bubble, reinforced by personalized recommendations and channel subscriptions. In general, radicalization is a more complex problem than what an analysis of default recommendations cans cope, for it involves the unique mindset and viewing patternsof a user interacting over time with an opaque multi-layer neural network tasked to pick personalized suggestions from a dynamic and virtually infinite pool of ideas.

"With two billion monthly active users on YouTube, the design of the recommendation algorithm has more impact on the flow of information than the editorial boards of traditional media. The role of this engine is made even more crucial in the light of (1) The increasing use of YouTube as a primary source of information, particularly among the youth (42); (2)The nearly monopolistic position of YouTube on its market;and (3) The ever-growing weaponization of YouTube to spread disinformation and partisan content around the world (43). And yet, the decisions made by the recommendation engine are largely unsupervised and opaque to the public.

"This research is an effort to make the behavior of the algorithm more transparent, in an effort to increase the awarenessof the public and YouTube’s accountability for their statements. We hope it will fuel a public discussion, not about whether YouTube should allow for conspiratorial content on the platform, but about whether such content is appropriate to be part of the baseline recommendations on the informational YouTube.

Online dating while female--the case of Bumble

The above figure is from the following Bloomberg story about (and critical of) the dating app Bumble.

For Bumble, the Future Isn’t Female, It’s Female Marketing
Whitney Wolfe Herd set out to build a safer dating app for women, but it’s not clear that she’s made a measurable difference. by Claire Suddath.

Coupling up with the help of the internet

My colleague Michael Rosenfeld, in Stanford's sociology department, has been studying how married couples first met, over time, with particular attention to the internet.  Those of you reading this on a stone tablet or parchment scroll may be surprised to hear that the internet is playing an ever-bigger role. But everyone might be surprised at how much bigger, how quickly.

The first figure below comes from a 2012 paper (with survey data through 2009),
Searching for a Mate: The Rise of the Internet as a Social Intermediary
by Michael J. Rosenfeld and Reuben J. Thomas, American Sociological Review 77(4): 523-547.

The red line records the percentage of couples who met online, and it was already the dominant method for same-sex respondents to report meeting, while for heterosexual couples it was surpassed only by meeting through friends (and church and primary or secondary school matches had almost dropped out of the picture, while bars were still making a good showing...)

An unpublished (but media-covered) paper brings the figure up to date to 2017, with the red line now approaching 40% for heterosexual couples, and friends (the blue line) continuing their decline.

Research Note:  Disintermediating your friends 
Michael Rosenfeld,  Reuben J. Thomas, Sonia Hausen,
 Draft date: July 15, 2019
Forthcoming in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Privacy and dating apps

As internet and app-driven dating becomes increasingly common, so has the tension between dating and privacy, i.e. between indicating to potential partners who you are and what you want, and keeping some privacy about these things in the rest of your life.  The NY Times has an article by NY Law School prof Ari Ezra Waldman that focuses on the design of dating apps with respect to privacy:

 Queer Dating Apps Are Unsafe by Design
Privacy is particularly important for L.G.B.T.Q. people. By Ari Ezra Waldman.

"Pete Buttigieg met his husband on a dating app called Hinge. And although that’s unique among presidential candidates, it’s not unique for Mr. Buttigieg’s generation — he’s 37 — or other members of the L.G.B.T.Q. community.

In 2016, the Pew Research Center found that use of online dating apps among young adults had tripled in three years, and nearly six in 10 adults of all ages thought apps were a good way to meet someone. The rates are higher among queer people, many of whom turn to digital spaces when stigma, discrimination and long distances make face-to-face interaction difficult. One study reported that in 2013 more than one million gay and bisexual men logged in to a dating app every day and sent more than seven million messages and two million photos over all.

...

"But for queer people, privacy is uniquely important. Because employers in 29 states can fire workers simply for being gay or transgender, privacy with respect to our sexual orientations and gender identities protects our livelihoods. 

...

"All digital dating platforms require significant disclosure. Selfies and other personal information are the currencies on which someone decides whether to swipe right or left, or click a heart, or send a message. 

...

" Hinge made a commitment to privacy by designing in automatic deletion of all communications the moment users delete their accounts. Scruff, another gay-oriented app, makes it easy to flag offending accounts within the app and claims to respond to all complaints within 24 hours. Grindr, on the other hand, ignored 100 complaints from Mr. Herrick about his harassment. If, as scholars have argued, Section 230 had a good-faith threshold, broad immunity would be granted only to those digital platforms that deserve it.

Privacy isn’t anathematic to online dating. Users want it, and they try hard to maintain it. The problem isn’t sharing intimate selfies, no matter what victim-blamers would have us believe. The problem is the law permits the development of apps that are unsafe by design."

Luohan Academy 2019 Digital Economy Conference

I'm travelling towards Hangzhou today, to go to the conference of the still new Luohan Academy.
Here's the agenda:

Someone is impersonating me on LinkedIn

An alert MIT grad student received a LinkedIn request that appeared to be from me, except not quite, and was kind enough to let me know. (In fact I don't have a LinkedIn account...)

There is someone on LinkedIn, it turns out, pretending to be me--same name, same jobs at Harvard and Stanford, same 2012 Nobel prize. Here's his profile:
 https://www.linkedin.com/in/alvin-roth-a37995186/

If you have a LinkedIn account, you can go to that profile, click on the three dot link, and get to a link called Report, one of whose options is to 'report an impersonator'.  (You can't send any explanatory text, so maybe getting many such reports will prompt LinkedIn to do something, where one or two haven't yet done the trick...)

thanks,
al

p.s. Here's the LinkedIn help page for reporting fake profiles (if you have a LinkedIn account).
***************
Update: LinkedIn followed up pretty quickly, and apparently nuked the fake account:

Response (06/06/2019 23:02 CST)

Hi Alvin,

I hope this email finds you well and that you are having a fantastic day, I'm Heisenberg from the Safety Operations Team and I'll be happy to assist you!

Thanks for informing us of this situation.

It is against the terms of LinkedIn's User Agreement and Professional Community Policies to impersonate another person on the website. We'll take the appropriate action based on the results of our investigation.

Thanks for your assistance in making LinkedIn a professional and trustworthy site.

Regards,

Heisenberg
LinkedIn Safety Operations Support Specialist 

Do child labor laws apply to social media?

The Guardian asks the question:
'It's not play if you're making money': how Instagram and YouTube disrupted child labor laws

"while today’s child stars can achieve incredible fame and fortune without ever setting foot in a Hollywood studio, they may be missing out on one of the less glitzy features of working in the southern California-based entertainment industry: the strongest child labor laws for performers in the country.

"Those laws, which were designed to protect child stars from exploitation by both their parents and their employers, are not being regularly applied to today’s pint-sized celebrities, despite the fact that the major platforms, YouTube and Instagram, are based in California. The situation is a bit like “Uber but for … child labor”, with a disruptive technology upending markets by, among other things, side-stepping regulation."

Official and unoffical Iranian kidney marketplaces--online prices

The Journal of Urology has published an in-press short paper about an informal website that seems to operate alongside the official Iranian monetary market for kidneys. (Thanks to Jim Brooks for the pointer.)

 Donor Willingness to Accept for Selling a Kidney for Transplantation: Evidence from Iran  by Mehdi Feizi and Tannaz Moeindarbari

"The Iranian model of kidney donation, established in 1988, is a state-funded system of living  renal  transplant  where  the  government  pays  for  all  transplant-related  expenses.  The Iranian Kidney Foundation, IKF hereafter, is in charge to match recipients and compensated donors. On the supply side, each donor registers at the local IKF after conducting preliminary medical  tests.  On  the  demand  side,  any  ESRD  patient  could  enter  the  kidney  waiting  list according to his/her blood type. A renal patient is matched to a donor, basically with the same blood type, based on the first come, first served.

"Both sides could also find each other outside the IKF, say in an online kidney matching website. However, since the transplant is exclusively possible through an official letter from the IKF,  they  have to register there."
***********
The article goes on to analyze prices asked and offered for kidney donation at the online kidney website that they refer to, http://www.koliee.ir/ .  It's in Farsi, but when I ask Google to translate it, their home page looks pretty interesting.  (It seems to offer the opportunity to search for kidneys by price as well as blood type.)

It contains some cautionary sentences:

"If you want to reach your goal without problems on this website, refuse to pay any money before the operation. Also, carry out kidney donation only through the Association for the Protection of Nephrology in your city."

It would be interesting to understand how websites like this interact with the official kidney market.

They also have a list of "our other websites" (again, in translation). The first one deals with surrogacy:

 Rental uterus

 My card

 Kidney donation

 The purse

 Amateur crafts

 Toggle Finder

 Mbti test

 Hello

 Buy and Sell a Loan

 Gnocard

Digital Economy and Inclusive Growth--report from the Luohan Academy

Here's an initial report from the Luohan Academy:

 Digital Technology and Inclusive Growth--Executive Summary

From the mission statement:
"Social scientists in general, including economists, must therefore collaborate to help societies adapt smoothly and fairly to the digital revolution. Two important objectives of the academic community are first, to understand business models and market structures that enable growth and progress, and second, to identify the impact of digitization on individual and social welfare. So far the rapidly increasing scale of digitization has not been followed by a corresponding increase in theoretically grounded empirical research on the rationales,  consequences, and policies of digitization. A well-organized research community could greatly facilitate and speed up such research efforts."

And, as the report makes clear, China is a good place to study ecommerce:

Gabriel Weintraub's class on online marketplaces at Stanford GSB (winter quarter)

Gabriel Weintraub writes:

I am sharing this information in case some of you are interested on this new half-quarter PhD course I will be teaching this coming Winter:

OIT 648: Empirics of Online Markets
In this course we cover current research on the empirics of platforms and online marketplaces. We will study diverse topics relevant to the design of these markets such as search and matching, review and reputation systems, demand estimation, and pricing. We will do so in the context of different application domains such as rentals, sharing, e-commerce, labor markets, and advertising. The course will be eclectic in terms of approaches, using reduced-form and structural econometrics, machine learning, and experimentation. The course will mostly consist of recent papers presented by the instructor, guests, and students. Some background knowledge required to understand current work will be provided as needed.

The course will meet on the following Mondays between 3:30 and 6:20PM: 

- Mon. Feb 4

- Mon. Feb. 11

- Mon. Feb. 25
- Mon, Mar 4
- Mon. Mar 11
- Fri. Mar. 15

Economists and economics in tech companies, by Athey and Luca

Susan Athey and Mike Luca have a new paper about the job market for economists in tech companies, and about the jobs they do there:

Economists (and Economics) in Tech Companies

Harvard Business School NOM Unit Working Paper No. 19-027

Abstract: As technology platforms have created new markets and new ways of acquiring information, economists have come to play an increasingly central role in tech companies – tackling problems such as platform design, strategy, pricing, and policy. Over the past five years, hundreds of PhD economists have accepted positions in the technology sector. In this paper, we explore the skills that PhD economists apply in tech companies, the companies that hire them, the types of problems that economists are currently working on, and the areas of academic research that have emerged in relation to these problems.

College admissions "customer relations management" software, and the marketing of Slate

The Chronicle of Higher Ed has a story about customer-relations management systems (CRMs) used by colleges to organize their marketing and admissions, focusing on one called Slate and how it sells itself to admissions officers:

A Tech Whiz Is Conquering College Admissions. It Takes Charm, Innovation, and Dancing Sharks.

"What is Slate? Technically, it’s a customer-relations management system, or CRM, which many colleges use to track data about prospective students and serve them customized information. Imagine a big virtual file cabinet full of such data, with a built-in brain that tells you how to act on it, responding to students’ interests and behaviors.

"Many admissions offices of all stripes rely on Slate for just about everything they do. Enrolling a freshman class requires relentless grunt work, and the system automates a great deal of it. An admissions officer who’s about to visit a high school can use Slate to send a text message to the cellphones of 20 prospective applicants there all at once.

EconSpark: AEA Economics Discussion Forum

The AEA has launched a moderated discussion forum for issues of interest to economists, including (but not limited to) the Economics job market.

EconSpark: AEA Economics Discussion Forum

I just signed up (and tried my hand at answering a question:)

Politico summarizes the Backpage story

Here's an article for those who haven't been following this first amendment/prostitution/human trafficking story...

The Sex-Trafficking Case Testing the Limits of the First Amendment
How a couple of crusading journalists made a fortune selling adult escort ads and in the process became unlikely and widely reviled First Amendment advocates.
By PAUL DEMKO July 29, 2018

Many of the people quoted focus on the motivations of the protagonists (get rich, versus defend the First Amendment press freedoms...). I wonder what role if any those questions will play in the legal proceedings.


Here are my other posts about  Backpage and related matters.

Ant financial

When I visited Hangzhou recently I learned a bit about Ant Financial, the offspring of Alibaba and the proprieter of AliPay.  Here's a story from the WSJ about how big they've grown, and the attention it is starting to bring them from Chinese regulators:

Jack Ma’s Giant Financial Startup Is Shaking the Chinese Banking System
Ant Financial is transforming how Chinese run their daily finances, drawing flak from big banks and warning shots from the government

"It handled more payments last year than Mastercard , controls the world’s largest money-market fund and has made loans to tens of millions of people. Its online payments platform completed more than $8 trillion of transactions last year—the equivalent of more than twice Germany’s gross domestic product.

"Ant Financial Services Group, founded by Chinese billionaire Jack Ma, has become the world’s biggest financial-technology firm, driving innovations that let people use their phones for buying insurance as easily as groceries, enabling millions to go weeks at a time without using physical cash.

"That success is also putting a target on the company’s back. China, even more than the U.S., is now under pressure to reckon with the disruptive power of a financial-technology giant."

Matching endorsements to endorsers

The NY Times reports on speed dating of Youtube influencers and brands (and on newly relevant "moral turpitude" clauses concerning both parties):

Inside the Mating Rituals of Brands and Online Stars
By Daisuke Wakabayashi

"Recently at the Anaheim Convention Center, about 50 people entered a room decorated as a stylish lounge for a speed dating event. They moved from table to table every 20 minutes, exchanging small talk and getting to know each other.
But the participants were not looking for love. They were YouTube stars and marketing executives from companies like Uber and Amazon seeking an advertising union.

"Deals between big brands and viral online video performers, once an informal alternative to traditional celebrity sponsorships, are quickly maturing into a business estimated to reach $10 billion in 2020.
...
"As the attention and money paid to stars on sites like YouTube and Instagram balloon, the stakes for both them and the brands to find the right match are rising. The speed dating event, held during VidCon, the online video industry’s annual convention, was one way the two sides are testing each other out.
...
"Most advertising deals with YouTube or Instagram stars now include a “morality clause.” One such agreement, shown to The New York Times, stated that a creator would agree to take down any content within 12 hours if the brand determined that the talent had promoted a competing product, posted “racy content” on social media or performed “an act of moral turpitude.”
...
Increasingly, [an agent] wants the same right for his clients because they have just as much to lose if a company becomes embroiled in scandal, such as the right to take down a video sponsored by a company if that brand’s executives are caught sexually harassing staff."
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Update: and here's a recent paper on the subject:

The Market for Influence

39 Pages Posted:  

Itay P Fainmesser

Johns Hopkins University - Carey Business School

Andrea Galeotti

University of Essex

Date Written: July 3, 2018

Abstract

Influencer marketing is the fast growing practice in which marketers purchase product endorsements from influencers, who are individuals with many followers and strong reputations in niche markets. This paper develops a model of the market interactions between influencers, followers and marketers. Influencers trade-off the increased revenue they obtain by posting more paid endorsements, with the negative impact that this has on their followers’ engagement, which in turn affects the price marketers are willing to pay for their endorsement. Our analysis provides testable predictions on how the price that influencers receive depends on the size of their audience, and how an improvement in the online search technology affects influencers’ competition for followers and marketers. We show that, in equilibrium, over- and under-provision of paid endorsements coexist. We evaluate the strategic effects of recent, trans- parency motivated, policy interventions implemented by competition authorities in the US and Europe, requiring influencers to clearly mark the content that is sponsored by marketers.