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But while Twitter has given developers like Ms. Chou the data they need to build custom experiences, the company has also yanked it away. It has locked down the kinds of data that developers use several times, most recently in 2018, when it limited access to its application programming interface, or A.P.I., effectively breaking a number of smaller companies apps.

Anil Dash, who helped found ThinkUp, a company that relied on data from Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, recalled telling Twitter executives that they had effectively killed his company by cutting off data access.

Developers do not trust them, Mr. Dash said. You are Lucy with the football and we are Charlie Brown, and you have pulled the football away 100 times.

Mr. Dash, who is now the chief executive of Glitch, said Twitters decentralization strategy hinged on its ability to woo developers back. Its not insurmountable, but its the fundamental condition of this entire strategy succeeding: Convince the most skeptical audience to trust them again.

Amir Shevat, Twitters head of product for developers, got the job by offering similar criticism to Mr. Dorsey and Mr. Agrawal. At the time, he was a top executive at Reshuffle, a developer platform. But after discussions about developer access, the Twitter executives agreed to acquire Reshuffle last March.

Talking to Jack and Parag, they recognized that Twitter before was a lot more open, Mr. Shevat said in an interview. He added, I think what youre seeing is a move back into that.

If you decentralize your platform and you give developers more powers to make richer experiences and better, safer timelines, then everybody benefits from this, he also said.

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Twitter Wants to Reinvent Itself, by Merging the Old With the New - The New York Times

WASHINGTON As the invasion of Ukraine continued on Friday morning, including near the capital city, Kyiv, one of Russias leading television stations aired a history lesson on an 18th century battle between German and Russian forces in Poland.

It was the kind of nationalistic propaganda typical of media coverage in a nation where the Kremlin exercises near-universal control. That control is evident in print, radio and television. However, it also appears to be slipping, which could present Russian President Vladimir Putin with a fresh challenge as he faces domestic and international opprobrium for his attack on Ukraine.

The Kremlin is clearly grappling with ways to keep the cracks in that dam from forming, said Gavin Wilde, an expert on Russia who formerly served on the National Security Council. Those cracks have come mostly in the form of internet outlets. "China was able to seal off its so-called sovereign information space in a way that Russia simply failed to do.

Russian President Vladimir Putin at a meeting with members of Russian business community in the Kremlin. (Alexei Nikolsky/Tass via Getty Images)

Lacking a firewall like the one erected by Beijing, Putin and his propagandists can do only so much to keep reality from smartphone and laptop screens which makes his control of traditional outlets all the more urgent.

Control of classic media is already pretty complete, Janis Kluge of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs told Yahoo News. It is hard to find truth about the war there.

On the radio station Komsomolskaya Pravda its very name an unabashed reminder of Soviet propaganda, since it means "Young Communist League Truth" a host on a Thursday evening program amplified anti-Ukrainian sentiments. He seemed to suggest that the sympathies of the Russian people lay entirely with Putin, who has claimed his invasion has been necessary to demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine.

We need to take Kyiv the sooner the better, one Komsomolskaya Pravda listener said in an email the host read on air with the somber tone of an endorsement. Meanwhile, the host on another Moscow-based radio talk show promised that once Russia occupied the country, right-wing Ukrainian nationalists whose influence Russia has vastly exaggerated in an effort to justify war would be sorted out.

Story continues

Rousing history lessons about World War II and vituperative attacks on Ukraine and its Western allies have filled Russian media in recent days, as the Kremlin resorted to tactics it uses whenever it needs to convince the Russian populace and quell any dissent. But the antiwar protests that have broken out in St. Petersburg and Moscow, as well as many smaller cities, are evidence that even media highly biased toward Putin cannot bend the narrative in his favor.

Demonstrators march with a banner that reads: "Ukraine peace, Russia freedom," in Moscow on Thursday, after Russia's attack on Ukraine. (Dmitry Serebryakov/AP Photo)

Dozens of leading Russian journalists have signed an open letter denouncing a war. War never was and never will be a means of resolving conflict, the letter says. In a country where 58 journalists have been assassinated since 1992, mostly for holding opposition views, putting ones name on such a condemnation amounts to an act of personal and professional courage.

The Russian people dont want a war, Ukrainian-American foreign policy expert Olga Lautman of the Center for European Policy Analysis told Yahoo News in an interview, as she watched the protests in Russia from New York. She described the Russian populace as weary with the coronavirus, suggesting that Putin simply does not have the popular support he enjoyed when he first invaded Ukraine eight years ago, seizing two eastern regions and the peninsula of Crimea.

"It's not that nationalistic feel from 2014," Lautman said, as Western TV outlets broadcast footage of young Russians crowding the streets of the nations two biggest cities, chanting antiwar slogans.

As during the Soviet era, Russian media is effectively a branch of the Kremlin tasked with carrying out its imperatives.

Theyre not independent, and arent there to hold government accountable, Peter Adams of the News Literacy Project told Yahoo News in an interview. Adams, who has tracked Russian media, described outlets there as trying to maintain the barest semblance of fairness and independence while avoiding pointed criticism of the Kremlin.

As if to underscore that very point, a Russian media regulatory body known as Roskomnadzor told outlets that they are required to use information received exclusively from official Russian sources on the military operations in Ukraine. Violating that order could result in a $60,000 fine.

Many outlets dont need the reminder. On the television network Rossiya 1, grim-faced pundits lashed out at the Ukrainian morons whom the network blamed for starting the conflict, ignoring the fact that it was Putin who pushed Eastern Europe into war.

Veterans of the Ukrainian National Guard Azov Battalion conduct military exercises for civilians in Kyiv on Feb. 6. (Gleb Garanich/Reuters)

In an act of classic Soviet script-flipping, they depicted Russian aggression as having been instigated by reactionary elements in Ukraine like the Azov Battalion, a troubling but small nationalistic outfit that has been controversially embraced by the military establishment.

A correspondent in Donetsk, one of the two eastern border provinces now under Russian control, described the ethnic Russian residents there as welcoming the assault because of the supposed oppression they had been facing from Ukrainians. Now they have confidence in the future and that the years-long war will finally come to an end, the correspondent said.

There would never have been a war if Russia had not invaded a sovereign nation whose own president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has pleaded emotionally for peace. Some believe that Putin miscalculated in launching the invasion, a view seemingly supported by the scale of protests that broke out on Thursday.

Ukrainian forces which have been bolstered by American and Western European matriel have thus far put up a determined resistance, depriving Putin of an easy victory and raising the possibility of a much more protracted conflict than he had anticipated.

"I dont think the Russians really reckoned with how fierce of a fight they were going to get from Ukraine," said Michael Weiss, an expert on Russia who is writing a book on the nations intelligence services. Now news outlets are essentially forced to sell a war many of them did not expect, Weiss told Yahoo News, against a neighbor who shares a similar culture and history but is also proudly independent.

"This is Slav on Slav, Weiss said. Russians don't want to see Kyiv on fire.

Police officers detain a demonstrator in Moscow on Thursday during a protest against Russia's invasion of Ukraine. (Alexander Nemenov/AFP via Getty Images)

Media outlets have resorted to showing the displacement of refugees from the Russia-controlled regions of Luhansk and Donetsk, which had been part of Ukraine until pro-Russian separatist forces with Kremlin backing seized them in 2014. Earlier this week, Putin sent peacekeeping forces there, triggering a first round of sanctions from the United States and signaling the beginning of what has been an ever-widening conflict.

Meanwhile, the extent to which mainstream Ukrainian society has harbored nationalist and outright Nazi elements has been greatly exaggerated. Kremlin emphasized need to liberate Ukraine from neo-Nazis, went a Thursday headline from Tass, the official Russian news agency, which dutifully proffered the narrative without proper context.

The art of their propaganda is often in the framing, Adams of the News Literacy Project told Yahoo News.

Ukraine does have a legacy of nationalism and antisemitism, as well as other forms of intolerance, but so do many other nations that Russia has not invaded. And Zelensky, the democratically elected Ukrainian president, is Jewish.

Russian media has also reported on its own journalists allegedly being shot at in Donetsk. It is difficult to know if those reports are true, but they stand in stark contrast to the acquiescence that has accompanied two decades in which journalists critical of the Kremlin have been hounded, jailed and sometimes murdered.

An independent media existed when Putin came to power two decades ago, but he has steadily closed off most avenues of dissent, creating a flattened media ecosystem whose contours he has shaped almost entirely on his own (with help from pro-Kremlin oligarchs eager to stay in his good graces).

Still, not even an authoritarian leader can entirely shape reality, or how people respond. Given the scope of protests across Russia on Thursday, it was inevitable that even some mainstream outlets would acknowledge basic facts about what the Kremlin was doing.

Perhaps the starkest of those acknowledgments appeared on the front page of Novaya Gazeta, a left-leaning newspaper, on Friday. Russia. Bombs. Ukraine, a towering headline said.

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What the Russian media is saying about the war in Ukraine - Yahoo News

While programmatic advertising has made it easy for marketers to buy ads at scale, the nature of the ecosystem makes it challenging for buyers to see exactly where their ads are appearing. Because of this opacity, advertisers lose a degree of control over the end results, which can lead to ads being shown on fake sites to bots, or on websites that do not align with the brands values.

Fortunately, there are steps media buyers can take to ensure their ads are being shown on legitimate websites to real people. Here are five questions marketers can ask themselves to gain greater control over their ads and improve ROI.

With challenges such as digital ad fraud and supply chain transparency hampering advertisers ability to reach the right audience with their message, its more important than ever for marketers to know exactly where their ad investment is being spent.

Marketers that buy directly from publishers likely have established relationships founded on trust and communication, but these relationships are harder to achieve in the programmatic ecosystem. To maximize ROI and achieve positive outcomes, marketers need to partner with publishers that adhere to industry standards and best practices and have integrated multiple solutions designed to increase transparency in the buying process and throughout their websites.

Many media buyers have a process in place to vet potential media partners, such as visiting websites to determine whether the publisher has a recognized brand, quality content or a legitimate advertising environment. But its also important to take additional steps to understand whether the site provides legitimate human traffic.

The industry has developed several solutions to give buyers greater insight into their media partners and transactions, and to detect and mitigate fraud. IAB Tech Labs Ads.txt is a framework that allows publishers to list all authorized sellers of their inventory. Buyers can cross-reference this file with Sellers.json, another tool developed to list authorized sellers and resellers of inventory. Partnering with an MRC-accredited ad fraud detection company offers a way to detect and measure IVT from an ad delivery perspective, while digital publisher audits allow advertisers to find publishers have taken steps to verify the quality of their website traffic through a third-party audit.

Another tactic is to select KPIs that determine real interaction and tailor campaigns to meet these goals. High numbers of impressions and clicks might give the appearance of engagement, but since bots are programmed to mimic human behavior, clicks dont necessarily translate into genuine interactions. Building a media plan that values conversions over clicks helps marketers optimize their campaigns by basing media buying decisions on metrics that matter and investing in partners that deliver results.

The next step is to find partners that have integrated these industry solutions into the selling process. Several organizations have created ways to make it easy for buyers to find partners that have taken such steps.

The IAB Tech Lab Transparency Center helps buyers and sellers learn more about their advertising partners including the industry standards they adhere to and compliance program certifications.

The Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) brings together companies to set standards that promote greater transparency. The TAG Registry is a database of companies that have agreed to adhere to TAGs standards and guidelines.

Publishers that have participated in a third-party digital publisher audit are included on the AAM Audited Domain List, which can be downloaded and used to prioritize publishers in DSPs and direct buys.

Many of these tools can be implemented during the vetting process when selecting media partners or can be used to create inclusion lists. By accessing resources and lists that have been compiled by trusted industry organizations, media buyers can save time in their vetting process.

Ad fraud drains billions each year from advertisers budgets and steals revenue from legitimate publishers. By investing in quality media, advertisers will not only protect their budgets and achieve greater ROI, but they will help sustain a safe, transparent advertising ecosystem. Marketers will also avoid unknowingly investing in sites that convey misinformation or harm brand safety by publishing content that does not align with their values or mission. By seeking out and investing in partners that have taken steps to provide greater transparency through industry-backed solutions and standards, marketers will gain control over where their ads are shown, achieve greater ROI and help elevate transparency in the industry.

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The 5 Ws of media buying for better control and ROI - The Drum

Member Article

By Neil McLeod, Director of Strategic Communications at The PHA Group

A gaping paradox exists within the world of pharmaceuticals.

The industry has verifiably saved the lives of millions across the world, played a key role in improving health outcomes for billions, and has had one of the most transformative effects on modern medicine in recent centuries. Why then, does its overall reputation remain a challenge?

Pharmas relationship with society can be turbulent, and the industrys prominent role in scientific discovery and medical progress is not the panacea that shields it, full time, from media criticism. This was very clear last week, following reports that potentially toxic levels of pharmaceutical drugs were found in a quarter of river locations across the world. The findings have clear environmental implications for governments and society, but the media coverage has been particularly damaging for pharmaceutical firms.

Those within the pharma world have, interestingly, been reluctant to discuss this issue publicly, despite many organizations working tirelessly behind the scenes to enhance their sustainability efforts. The resultant policy of engaging with the media only when absolutely necessary has unfortunately left a chasm to be filled by less informed, third-party voices, who may not have the industrys best interests at heart.

As a result, media coverage on the industry often focuses on the trials and tribulations of big pharma, with many prominent stories in recent years focusing on crises, fines, or the consequences of major decisions by pharma executives. The nature of this coverage, which has prevailed over favourable news, has led to an increasingly blurred, some would say unfair, public perception of the pharma industry.With consumer trust voted the second most important factor for consumer engagement, firms need to start relaying a defined, clearly relatable, purpose, if they want to shift the reputational dial, and prevent negative stories from tarnishing their reputation.This all starts with a well-defined communications strategy.

The strict rules on what pharma companies can and cant say are tough and well-known. However, as other industries have found, there is still great opportunity to tell a wider corporate story, and to be creative with messaging . The scope is there - disease awareness campaigns to charity partnerships, positive corporate news, and profiling, there is a wealth tactics available to develop more positive relationships with the media. Naturally, campaigns need to be carefully formulated to ensure they are compliant, but as the world opens up once again, there would appear to be great opportunity to tell strong corporate stories.

With ongoing uncertainty continuing to cause issues in markets all over the world, competition is rife, and pharma companies like companies in many other sectors are facing more demand and greater attention on their business practices than ever before. There is an opportunity to use this momentum for good, to talk directly to public and healthcare audiences, tell Pharmas side of the story and redefine what the industry stands for but only if firms are bold enough to take on the challenge.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Nathan Stennett .

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Pharma and polluted rivers why Pharma firms must take greater control of the media narrative - Bdaily

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After my speech on Building Leadership Presence for a large business organization, an audience member raised her hand to comment: Im new to the company, but there is one change that I wish wed make. I think we need a mentor program where wed be paired with an experienced manager to have someone show us the ropes. That would really shorten the time it takes new people to develop leadership presence.

When I suggested that she find her own mentor, this woman was way ahead of me. Oh, I already did that, she replied. I just think it would be a great program for all new employees.

Her comments reminded me of research conducted by the American Management Association (AMA) several years ago. They did a survey with 6,000 participants across the United States. The survey asked only two questions: 1) Do you get enough recognition at work? 2) Would you do a better job if you got more recognition?

The response was overwhelming: 97 per cent of the respondents said no they didnt get enough recognition at work, and 98 per cent replied yes they would do a better job if they received more recognition.

To the AMA, this pointed out inadequate management practices. Obviously, not enough managers were doing a good enough job at recognizing and rewarding the people who report to them.

While that is a valid point, I looked at the results in another way: It seemed that most of us were waiting without much success for someone else to acknowledge our efforts. Only then would we do a better job.

Talk about relinquishing control!

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On the other hand, some individuals, like the woman in my audience, refuse to give anyone else control over their performance whether its the motivation to do a good job or help in developing leadership presence. These self-starters dont wait to be empowered; they go right out and empower themselves.

Troy Media columnist Carol Kinsey Goman, PhD, is an executive coach, consultant, and international keynote speaker at corporate, government, and association events. She is also the author of STAND OUT: How to Build YourLeadership Presence. For interview requests, click here.

The opinions expressed by our columnists and contributors are theirs alone and do not inherently or expressly reflect the views of our publication.

Troy MediaTroy Media is an editorial content provider to media outlets and its own hosted community news outlets across Canada.

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Who is in control of your success? - Troy Media