Fitting that my only blog post during the last 13 months was a comment on a post with the title The Shit Show, about Twitter, of course. I’m thinking about starting to share a little bit more again. We’ll see how that goes.
Posts Tagged: social networks
23 Jul 20 — / in English — No comments
The European Model
“Europe, through regulations like GDPR and the Copyright Directive, along with last weekās court decision striking down the Privacy Shield framework negotiated by the European Commission and the U.S. International Trade Administration (and a previous decision striking down the Safe Harbor Privacy Principles framework), is splintering off into an Internet of its own.
This Internet, though, feels like the worst of all possible outcomes. On one hand, large U.S. tech companies are winners, at least relative to everyone else: yes, all of the regulatory red tape increases costs (and, for targeted advertising, may reduce revenue), but the impact is far greater on would-be competitors. To put it in allegorical terms, the E.U. is restricting the size of the castle even as it dramatically increases the moat” (Ben Thompson).
14 Jul 20 — / in English — No comments
Anti-Pseudoscience Advocate Anne Borden King Has Cancer, and Now Her Facebook Feed Is Full of Pseudoscience Cancer ‘Alternative Care’ Ads
“Facebook is a criminal enterprise fully and knowingly complicit in all of this ā from the spread of bigotry to the spread of pseudoscience.
Conversely, legitimate advertisers are abandoning Facebook because they want nothing to do with any of this. To remain on Facebook is to be complicit by association” (John Gruber).
29 Dec 19 — / in English — No comments
The Age of Instagram Face
“The rising popularity of plastic surgery is more than a little horrifying” (Paul Kafasis).
31 Oct 19 — / in English — No comments
“Weāve made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally. We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought. Why? A few reasonsā¦?” (Jack Dorsey).
Finally some good news from Twitter.
11 Jun 19 — / in English — No comments
Competition can fix Big Tech, but only if we don’t make “bigness” a legal requirement
“Iām all for making Big Tech small again and fixing the internet so that itās not just five giant websites filled with screenshots from the other four, not to mention doing something about market dominance, corporate bullying, rampant privacy invasions and so on” (Cory Doctorow).
6 Jun 19 — / in English — No comments
Open gardens
“To summarize:
- Open gardens have curators instead of gatekeepers.
- Open gardens use standards so that the same formats exist inside and outside the platform.
This is only possible by embracing the open web. I believe itās an important part of the way forward for all great platforms” (Manton Reece).
29 May 19 — / in English — No comments
Fake News is Spam
“Crank calls and robocalls were spam of the phone era. The[n] email had its spam. Text messages also became spam. Why are we surprised that social media posts became spam ā in most cases as fake news. Tomorrow it will be video and virtual reality spam.
At the end of the day, we have to remember: spam is an unsolicited or undesired electronic message. The network and the tools of delivery donāt matter” (Om Malik).
18 May 19 — / in English — No comments
Can āIndieā Social Media Save Us?
You can find me on micro.blog/carrington.
22 Apr 19 — / in English — No comments
Uber Questions
“However, if I bought individual stocks [ … ], I would be out: this S-1 is so devoid of meaningful information (despite its length) that it makes me wonder what, if anything, Uber is trying to hide. If I am going to be taken for a ride I want at least some idea of where I am going ā isnāt that the point of Uber in the first place” (Ben Thompson)?
30 Dec 18 — / in English — No comments
Shocker: Facebook’s āClear historyā privacy feature is vaporware
Another link to Daring Fireball, a site which obviously share my animosity towards Facebook.
30 Dec 18 — / in English — No comments
Inside Facebookās Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech
“Again I say, Facebook is to privacy and civil discourse what Enron was to accounting” (John Gruber).
15 Nov 18 — / in English — No comments
Facebookās Tipping Point of Bad Behavior?
“Facebookās standard playbook is to admit that they made a mistake by being slow to react, remind us of their good intentions, then promise to do better. Itās the aw geez who woulda thought in the dorm room that we would have to deal with all these tricky issues defense.
This has been very effective for a company that still gets the benefit of the doubt. No one would ever suggest that Facebook *wanted* to bring about the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya or lynchings in rural Indian villages. They just were in a little over their heads.
But this Soros thing is different. This is no passive failure. Itās a malevolent action taken against groups who criticize Facebook for things that Facebook admits it has failed at. It takes advantage of and contributes to the most poisonous aspects of our public discourse” (The New York Times).
6 Nov 18 — / in English — No comments
New York Times & Digital Double Standards
“The New York Times has been a pointy edge of the coverage on Facebook, Google and Big Tech domination of our daily lives. [ā¦]
However, the Times is hypocritical, to put it mildly. While it talks about a surveillance advertising technology ecosystem, the company itself is a willing participant ā its web pages and apps are jam-packed with advertising and tracking scripts. It complains about Facebook ads in the news stream, and yet it blasts large ads in your face on its website and in the applications. The reading experience is deprecated by really big ads, which honestly has lead to the use of ad-blockers and a deep dislike for their product” (Om Malik).
29 Sep 18 — / in English — No comments
Facebook claims network breach affects up to 50 million users
“Mike Isaac and Sheera Frenkel, reporting for The New York Times:
‘Facebook on Friday said an attack on its computer network led to the exposure of information from nearly 50 million of its users.’
Who wants to bet that a week or two from now they ādiscoverā it was 100 million accounts, and then eventually admit it was 200 million?” (John Gruber)
8 Sep 18 — / in English — No comments
Donald Trump is a pathogen evolved to thrive in an attention-maximization ecosystem
“…even though the virus doesnāt understand what itās doing or how itās doing it, itās able to use feedback to refine its strategies, gaining control over more resources with which to try more strategies.
Itās a powerful metaphor for the kind of cold reading we see Trump engaging in at his rallies, and for the presidency itself. I think it also explains why getting Trump of Twitter is impossible: itās his primary feedback tool, and without it, he wouldnāt know what kinds of rhetoric to double down on and what to quietly sideline.“
4 Sep 18 — / in English — No comments
Skype, redesigned (again)
“Microsoft is once again redesigning Skype ā in order to make Skype great again. Or as a Microsoft executive puts it too āfocus on simplicity* to provide an overall better experience for you by making Skype faster to learn and easier to use.ā What he is not saying ā Microsoft messed up Skype so bad that what was a market leading product is now an afterthought in modern daily communication flow.“
21 Aug 18 — / in English — No comments
Research Suggests Facebook Fueled Anti-Refugee Attacks in Germany
Let’s just quit, shall we?