Good morning, Quartz readers!
Want to make what you’re reading better in just three minutes? Take our survey. Each of Quartz’s products is designed to improve your life in a different way, and we’d love to know how you think we’re measuring up against that goal.
In a diary discovered after the fall of Berlin, Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels outlined his principles (pdf) for effective propaganda. The second of these states that it “must be planned and executed by only one authority.”
What would Goebbels have made of Facebook? Where the 20th century was macro, the 21st is micro. Just as the clash of massive armies has given way to guerrilla war and terrorism, information—and disinformation—now flows not from a single entity but from thousands or millions. And with the micro-targeting power of social networks like Facebook, propaganda is no longer one message: It can be any number of them, tailored to any number of audiences.
Russia understands both these differences. The ads it spread on Facebook during last year’s US election—some of which Congress made public this week—were not a single pro-Trump message; indeed, many supported left-leaning causes like anti-Trump rallies and LGBT rights. Where Goebbels aimed to sow confusion and fear, Russia’s goal was simply to deepen the American public’s existing divisions. And unlike Goebbels, Russia is fine with not having the monopoly on propaganda. If a bevy of Macedonian teenagers are helping, so much the better.
The key lesson of the scandal is not that Russia is dangerous to US democracy, but that social media makes all democracies vulnerable to anyone with a political agenda, a bit of money, and a reasonable quantity of data. It would be a trivial matter to target Facebook ads at just the undecided voters in the US’s small number of competitive districts at the next election, for instance, and very hard to catch the culprit.
Guerrilla war cannot be won by a conventional army; it requires a solution to the war’s underlying causes. Similarly, 21st century propaganda cannot be dealt with by trying to eliminate its sources. How platforms like Facebook enable it is also part of the problem, and they need to take part in the solution as well.—Nikhil Sonnad
Six things on Quartz we especially liked
Why pregnant women die in America. With an estimated 26.4 deaths for every 100,000 live births in 2015, the US has the highest maternal mortality rate of all industrialized countries—by several times over. And the trend is worsening. Annalisa Merelli unpacks how sexism, racism, inequality, and a fragmented, for-profit health system all combine to form a country that cares too little about its new mothers.
Deadly air. More than two dozen people suffocated in a small Pennsylvania town on Halloween weekend in 1948. The disaster happened two decades before the passage of America’s first clean air laws. Zoe Schlanger reports that when a weather phenomena began trapping gases in the town’s valley, the regular morning haze came and never left. First plants died, then pets. By the weekend it was people. Donora, Pennsylvania knows what life was like before clean air laws, and it wasn’t pretty.
Are you on clock time or event time? There are two main ways to approach time, and they’re frequently in conflict with one another—at work, in families, and in societies moving from one system to the other. Lila MacLellan, writing in Quartz At Work, investigates the psychology and the business history dictating our relationships with our schedules, and offers new insight into the universal quest for time management.
Will McKinsey walk the talk? One of the world’s top consulting firms is preparing to select a new leader next year, and the list of potential candidates is already taking shape. The selection process is reportedly a grueling one (paywall), but Lila MacLellan argues the choice for McKinsey is simple—that is, if you accept the findings of the firm’s own comprehensive research on diversity and gender equality.
Confucius centers across Africa are teaching Mandarin and a pro-China outlook. China is driving the largest language and culture-promoting initiative the world has ever seen. But, as Claire van den Heever finds traveling through Lusaka, Dar es Salaam and Harare, Confucius centers are more than just language schools in Africa. China hopes the centers will help shape its public image for the long term on a continent with so many young people.
Yolie Cintron was going to commit suicide—and then she found zumba. Cintron is just one of thousands of people who swear by the dance-fitness craze. Amy X. Wang travels to Orlando, Florida for the 10th annual ZINCON, a convention of 8,000 zumba instructors, to investigate the origins and appeal of the mysterious multi-million dollar empire, led by—magically enough—three men all named Alberto.
Four things elsewhere that made us smarter
Cooking for survival. Coverage of refugees and displaced people often feature the predictable images of large sacks of anonymous food distributed to the hungry masses. But what do people actually make for themselves and their families in these trying circumstances? Andrew Esiebo, reporting for Buzzfeed in Niger, visited a camp for internally displaced people, many fleeing Boko Haram, and came back with a humanizing photo essay on the simple meals that sustain families.
(First) class concerns. Dwight Garner, book critic for the New York Times, was once so terrified of flying he would get to the airport and promptly turn around. In a funny essay for Esquire about his only time in first-class, he remembers a course he took for paranoid travelers, in which he learned which clothes are most likely to catch fire in a flight emergency.
Portugal’s road to decriminalization. In the 1980s, before the opioid crisis gripped the US, one in ten Portuguese citizens were heroin addicts—until 2001, when the country became the first nation to decriminalize the consumption of all illicit substances. In a sweeping essay, Susana Ferreira returns to her family’s home and, with the help of a local doctor uncovers how a law change informed an enormous shift in perception, pulling the nation out of the depths of addiction.
I forgot my key to $30,000 of bitcoin. It’s the stuff of nerd-nightmare fuel. In Wired, Mark Frauenfelder traces how his casual purchase of 7.4 bitcoins became, thanks to an innocent mistake, locked in a web of complex systems. He enlisted the services of a hypnotist, his family, Reddit, and finally an overseas hacker, all in a desperate bid to recover the keys to his wallet—and his cash.
Our best wishes for a relaxing but thought-filled weekend. Please send any news, comments, Confucius centers, and bitcoin PINs to hi@qz.com. You can follow us on Twitter here for updates throughout the day, or download our apps for iPhone and Android.