Good morning from a frighteningly quiet Caribbean in terms of hurricane activity. Looking at the previsions, that is about to change over the coming week or two as we head into the statistically peak hurricane activity period.

Here on the internet, there are no seasons, just waves and waves and never-ending waves of innovation, development, and more. For me, three interesting developments on the web merit a little discussion and sharing. One is about the name of the Fediverse—something that is presently misunderstood, too technical, too “techie.” The second is about the governance of such systems, given their federated and distributed nature, and the third is about the inclusion/exclusion of the current tech giants from the Social Web.

Firstly, the term “Fediverse” is a portmanteau of two words: federation and universe. I can’t definitively say when this term was coined and first used, but it has become the standard term to describe federated and open-source protocols used in products such as Mastodon, Bluesky (sort of), Pixelfed, and Peertube. The application list is growing, as is the user base of many of these applications.

But as is often the case, most used terms are not particularly descriptive enough of the technology’s accurate meaning and actual use. There’s a growing voice advocating using a different term than Fediverse to represent better what Mastodon, etc., provides in applications and services. Many involved in the indie web use the Social Web to indicate what the Fediverse is trying. I think this term is a bit better, and I like the idea behind the web in the first place. I think Fediverse is a little alienating and too “techie” for most. Ask people around you what the Fediverse is or what it does, and you’ll get differing responses. Some will say it has something to do with the Feds, the Multiverse, or even the Metaverse. “Social Web” is succinct and descriptive.

Which makes me think about the use of the internet and particularly the social web in the Caribbean. So far, I haven’t encountered any instances of Mastodon or anything similar. It seems that we in the Caribbean are content with the offerings of the huge tech companies that provide people with a just-good-enough service to prevent them from leaving, despite it being an icky experience for many. The last statistics I had showed that once a user got on the Internet in the Caribbean, they would sign up for some Social Networking platform, usually one that is Meta (nee Facebook) owned: Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp. With WhatsApp being the most popular, despite it not really being a social network —it’s a messaging app. Have I missed something? If you know of any Social Web (Fediverse) projects, let me know by replying to this email.

Fediverse terminology aside, I’ve been following a project about the governance and moderation of various Fediverse (social web) platforms since its start. In fact, it inspired me to write the blog posts to accompany our own project request with Stanford, which was ultimately rejected, sadly.

The project aimed to answer the following research question: “What are the most effective governance and administration models/structures in place on medium-to-large-sized Fediverse servers, and what infrastructural gaps (human and digital) persist?”

The project has now produced its final report. Although I haven’t read it yet, the findings go into a lot of detail about moderation, leadership when running an instance, federated diplomacy, and the tools required for this. If anyone is interested in starting an instance of something like Mastodon, then I think you should give this report a look over. The main areas discussed are about the governance structures to put into place, what it is you’re trying to achieve with an instance of a Social Web product/platform, how to moderate and what to build as a team to do that work, including the community of users (something big tech should learn about), all the way to legal liabilities, something that can’t be ignored.

Lastly, I wanted to discuss my feelings about the Social Web federation and where it relates to the services offered by the big tech platforms. Off the bat, and if this isn’t clear to you, I have a lot of issues with Facebook and other similar platforms, mostly about their incentives related to advertising and how those incentives are feeling a dangerous lurch to a more authoritarian political landscape. Oh, and the genocide they have sponsored … But. But, I will defend the right of all platforms to decide whether or not to federate with Facebook through their Threads federation projects. I will also defend Facebook’s right to pursue such projects. Where I diverge from some is my opinion on what Facebook is trying to do. I do not believe for an instant that this is benevolent inclusion in a powerful competitor and, some would say, a threat to the existence of Instagram and other advertising systems. To explain what I mean, let me recount the fable of the scorpion and the frog.

The fable starts with the scorpion on the bank of a river wanting to cross, but the scorpion can’t swim. With a frog nearby, the scorpion asks the frog if it can carry itself on its back. To which the frog points out that the scorpion will sting it, ultimately killing it. The scorpion retorts that it couldn’t do such a thing as it would indeed kill itself in the process, so the frog should rest assured of its safety. The frog considers the proposition and then accepts to carry the scorpion on its back. Halfway across the river, the scorpion stings the frog anyway, ending both their lives. With its last breath, the frog asks the scorpion why it stung, given the consequences. The scorpion simply replied, “I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist. It’s in my nature”.

Facebook will take, steal, profile, and hoard data insecurely, putting us all at risk. They have knowinglysold nazi ads, aided child abuse, provided tools to commit genocideand many other vile things. They ultimately strangle anything they touch, like the Social Web (Fediverse). It’s in their nature.

Reading

I’m in deep on the Internet Governance track, continuing to read Anu Bradford’s book Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology. I’ve linked to it before, but it’s worth linking again.

As I read it, I thought of the terrible takes several tech pundits (primarily based in the US) are having about the effect of the DSA on companies like Apple. A certain, shall we say, Apple Fanboy population is losing their minds about how there is finally a regulatory body taking on and winning against the company. I shall not name names, but one prominent blogger would do well to read the above book and perhaps travel outside the country to gain a better perspective and knowledge of the world.

If you thought the Disney corporation was all nice and cosy, producing fun light entertainment, perhaps it’s time to reevaluate that. Recently, a visitor to one of its parks died after an allergic reaction to food served in one of the restaurants onsite. It seems Disney was clearly at fault, which will finally be decided in the courts through a wrongful death lawsuit. But that didn’t stop them from trying to maggot their way out of responsibility and liability. How? Because the widower had once signed up for a Disney+ trial. He wasn’t even a paying subscriber, but the clauses of that trial exonerated Disney from all evil, even forcing the user to waive the right to trial. They relented, but only after a nasty backlash, providing a clearly BS and insulting comment.

Things need to change on the Internet.

I’m a little late posting this to the web, but it’s here now 😀 The newsletter version will go out as usual on Tuesday morning. Have a great week.

Unless you’ve not been reading, you’ll have noticed that I have been a bit down on “tech” lately. And it’s true: I do feel a sense of despair when I look at the tech industry from a macro perspective, or at least from the perspective of the numerous articles, blogs, and reports discussing the latest dreadful thing tech has enabled.

Last week was no different, with no less than Apple starting to show colours that it never used to. The TLDR is that Apple has been battling with the EU about its App Store policies related to the fees Apple charges. Not the amount of the fees, although that too, is up for debate, the anti-steering fees, a “Core Technology Fee”, and most egregiously, a fee to anyone and everyone that graces their presence by using an Apple product. Apple decided that —during a period in which it has been widely criticised for its tone-deaf advert for the latest iPad in which it crushed the tools of the creative industry, irking many people in that industry to feel more than a little concerned about how Apple now treats this industry compared to its historical stance for the creative arts— it should bully Patreon into taking a cut from all its users whether they use Apple services, software and hardware or not, purely because that used an in-app purchase on the Patreon app. Of course, Patreon could not use Apple’s in-app purchasing system, but no. Apple closed that door too, even going as far as to threaten to kick the Patreon app out of the App Store if they didn’t switch payment processors to Apple’s own. Then it transpired that the rates Patreon charges its users are lower than those of Apple, which is mafia-ing out of people. To remind you, Apple takes a 30% cut in the first year, and if you can qualify for the Small Business Program (if), that is reduced to 15% for each transaction. So now, Patreon users pay Apple the biggest slice of their earnings for little to no actual service rendered, over and above the service actually rendered by Patreon. This has a name, and it is called rent-seeking. This is a feudal economy and brings us back to medieval times when lords of the manor trashed the commoner’s rights to extract more and more money to gain and sustain wealth. This will not end well for Apple.

This is by no means the only big tech company doing this, and it is precisely this that is contributing to my overall dismay of the industry. And without looking like Old Man Shouting at Clouds, I yearn for us to get back to a time when tech tried to solve real-world problems in the most upfront and honest manner it used to. I’m not naive; I know it wasn’t all like that. But things have shifted completely 180 with companies defaulting to shady business practices and rent-seeking as a strategy, which dismays me.

If this is new to you, I suggest you read Cory Doctorow’s and Ed Citron’s excellent work. You may not agree with everything they say, but you will undeniably notice that things have gotten worse on the Internet for a while and are not improving.

I just had my attendance confirmed for the upcoming 19th Internet Governance Forum. I’ll follow the sessions for anything that catches my attention and report back here when possible. Still, as I’m a remote participant and the meeting’s timezone is many hours in the future, I might have to wait for recordings and transcripts to process.

Reading

Techdirt has a good write-up on a recent report that seems to indicate that LEOs from the likes of Blue Origin and Starlink are causing/about to cause another environmental disaster. If you were around in the 80s, one environmental subject became the centre of attention: the Ozone Layer. Spray cans of various products like hair products, paint, etc., emitted chemicals that contributed to the decay of the ozone layer faster than had previously been observed, which was a significant danger to the planet. Within a few years, the world collaborated, CFCs were banned, and the ozone layer has largely recovered. It is all under threat from the daily decay of SEOs entering the atmosphere as they fall out of orbit and end their useful life. Estimates place around 29 tons of satellites will enter the atmosphere every day. Yes, day. You read that right. Move fast and break things.

Brian Merchant writes a blog called Blood in the Machine. He came to my attention as he single-handedly reframed the definition of a Luddite to what it actually meant, rather than the negative image of a technophobic imbecile that much of industry has progressed for decades. Luddite even came to be used as an insult or a word to suggest that one is not stupid. This is patently false, and Brian’s blog, Blood in the Machine, is a good site to read regularly to give a better perspective on tech. His latest article talks about AI and how there is now a concerted fightback from artists and others who are tired of having their works used, refactored and spat out for profit without so much of a request for use, attribution or, of course, payment. I’ve been looking into legislation around this issue in the Caribbean, and as far as I can tell, there is nothing to protect artists from the greed of the LLMs. Moar data.¹ So it isn’t an issue over there or limited to Silicon Valley. It’s the livelihoods of hardworking-scraping to make a living in very challenging circumstances-artists in the Caribbean. Move fast and break things.

Lastly, I wanted to talk about Worldcoin, the shitcoin pyramid scam disguised as an inherently insecure and fundamentally flawed “digital ID”. Some governments are waking up to this fact, something I have highlighted here before, but so far, precious little has been discussed in the Caribbean. I wish to call on CARICOM and the member states to ban its implementation before proper due process proactively, risk assessment and financial, cybersecurity, privacy and consumer rights legislation are in place to protect people in the region adequately. It has no place here. Move fast and break things.

Not breaking things, but moving fast enough. Have a great week.

We’re getting into the main activity of hurricane season, and things are starting to liven up. There is activity a little less than halfway between the islands and the Cabo Verde islands, which looks favourable to develop into something to watch out for over the next couple of days or so. This is a season I have not been looking forward to for several months.

My week has been filled with working on an upcoming project; although I am behind in what I promised to do, I’m sure I’ll catch up and work on finalising a couple of projects in my new role. I’m encountering organisations with basic digitalisation needs that are not being met by the offer in the market. For example, I’m seeing companies being demoed and offered expensive and sophisticated software to do document management when, in fact, what they need is a simple solution that works the way they work, not the other way around. It reminds me of when SAP started to gain a foothold in large organisations, forcing them to completely change their way of working to be ‘compatible’ with SAP. Sometimes with disastrous results for the company. I feel we’re experiencing a similar situation with the tools on offer. SMSEs in the Caribbean can not afford either the upfront costs, the ongoing development and integration costs or the training budgets required to integrate these tools; they are primarily concerned with turning a profit or just maintaining a turnover. If you work as a reseller, integrator or consultant in the Caribbean, it might be worthwhile evaluating the ‘real’ needs of your clients versus your offering and seeing if there is indeed a gap. There’s an opportunity out there!

Reading

Most of the reading I have been doing and sharing here is through my research and general interest in tech. I thought it might be helpful to share a couple of books I’ve been reading or have finished.

The first is called Number Go Up by Zeke Faux. It charts the batshit crazy world of cryptocurrencies and the associated grifts and frauds that seem to permeate this industry more than we see in Mafia-run casinos. What struck me the most was not the pyramid scheming that goes on; I knew that from the beginning and never got involved in crypto. Or the absolute waste of energy it all is —and I’m not talking about the spilt ink, conferences, YouTube channels, podcasts and all sorts of paraphernalia surrounding this “industry— I’m talking about how it is literally helping the planet to get past a point of no return on climate change for what? A fucking stupid entry in a slow, clunky, foolish database called Blockchain, so one can pretend it is actually worth something (as long as the supply of mugs is long, then the grifters can continue to grift). But it is the way this industry has enabled and continues to enable slavery, murder, rape, and all sorts of other vile behaviour, just to make a little money and to pretend it was made from thin air. I firmly believe that anyone in the industry promoting it has lost their moral compass. Anyway, enough ranting; read the book and find out for yourself just how depraved these people are.

The second book continues my work in Internet Governance. It’s called Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology. The author is Ann Bradford, and it should be recommended reading for anyone getting involved in Internet Governance. The book looks at what are essentially three schools of Internet Governance and governance in the tech industry. One is the US viewpoint, the other is the competing position from China and similarly-run states, and the third is a look at the EU position. I’ve not finished the book yet, but I have learned an awful lot about the subject so far.

I’ll get back to posting some article links here next week.

I’ll be participating in several events over the coming months, culminating in the ARIN Public Policy and Members Meeting in October, where I hope to get elected to serve on the Advisory Committee. Before that, there are several meetings to discuss the Global Digital Compact that I will be following attentively.

Have a great week, and thanks for reading and subscribing.

Good morning from a very wet eastern Caribbean as I write this on a Monday morning in my office.

Last week was full of tying up outstanding things and preparing for the later part of the year. Yes, it really did pass that quickly!

I wanted to share a few real-world issues for those embarking on or already on the Digital Transformation journey. Off the bat, you know I don’t like the term Digital Transformation at all, but I am constrained to use it for the time being or until I come up with a better description that is accepted by the world.

In trying to solve some basic digitalisation problems for small businesses, we are often constrained by budgets, training, and other systemic issues that small businesses have to deal with daily. For example, for many internal tasks and processes, small businesses cannot just throw money at the problem, purchase a software platform, or pay a developer (open source or otherwise) to build an “app for that”. So, they are forced to use some of the products and services they ordinarily use to provide a digital backbone for their operations.

One such tool that is both amazing and amazingly dumb is Microsoft’s SharePoint. It can provide a basis for developing sophisticated and simple-to-use digital process software in any organisation. I’ve been working on getting a customer to use it to manage invoices. Overall, it has provided the client with an excellent tool that is in testing and provides the client with just what he needs for a small outlay. However, some basic things are just missing or operate in a really odd manner for absolutely no reason I can determine. One example is a handy way to calculate the values in columns. For example, if you have an invoice amount and the tax rate is 8%, you can calculate the total amount in a separate column. Neat. But, you cannot add an automatically calculated total to the column as you can for numeric columns. Why Microsoft, why? Why snatch defeat from the jaws of victory? The workaround? A hidden calculated column and a convoluted automation to copy the value from the calculated column to a numerical column so you can add a total. 🤦‍♂️

There is a better workaround, but it strikes me as odd that something so basic hasn’t been implemented as base functionality!

Reading

I’m still reading Zeke Faux’s Number Go Up, and as I get deeper into it, I realise that the absolute horrors around the crypto market are very disturbing and sickening. Currently, I feel like those who ply crypto and those who hold crypto are complicit in all sorts of dreadful crimes like slavery, torture, murder and many more. I really hope this bubble bursts, but I fear that it won’t, as greed is a powerful motivator.

Meta has been up to its old tricks again and has been ordered to pay $1.4 billion (yes, b) to settle a lawsuit over what? Violating personal data, specifically facial recognition data, used to pump shitty ads to the world.

Brett Solomon is leaving Access Now after serving for 15 years. His goodbye article is a good read on digital human rights and the role of digital authoritarianism, which is gaining ground worldwide.

If you haven’t already read Wendy M. Grossman’s blog, I recommend it. She has a good take on the CrowdStrike debacle. This is not the first time, nor will it be the last.

Over in Malaysia, things are going to get very rough very quickly:

… the country’s Law and Institutional Reform Minister Azalina Othman Said, seeks to hold social media and messaging platforms accountable for content disseminated through their services.

If this sounds familiar, that’s because governments worldwide are starting to use excuses like this to take control of the Internet without proper consultation, scrutiny and accountability.

I wonder if a “pirate Internet” will become a thing, like the old days when pirate radio stations were popping up in urban areas to serve communities, but mainstream radio stations didn’t.

As promised, this will go out as a newsletter each Tuesday morning. Sign up here to get it by email if you haven’t already done so. No tracking, no ads, and no creepy stuff.

Have a great week.

I want to start this edition with a little apology. Last week, on Tuesday, you would have received an email from the newsletter list that I have been running on and off for a few years now in a different format than I have been doing previously. This was a test to see how the newsletter platform would operate and also to get something more regularly out of the drafts folder and into mailboxes. I hope you don’t mind.

For various reasons that I don’t want to get into here, writing long articles about one subject has become increasingly difficult. Suffice it to say that I haven’t been able to give the newsletter the time and attention it needs to write those articles, so I tried something different to get a regular newsletter out there.

However, for just over a year, I’ve regularly written a shorter version of the newsletter idea and posted it on a new blog I set up for professional purposes. (Quick plug: you can find it at matthewcowen.org) Each blog post is about 500 words or so, and each week, I write about what I’ve been working on, my thoughts and other things that I think would be relevant or helpful for people to know. That’s all in a small first section, and then there’s a section dedicated to what I have been reading. Often, it is relevant and useful articles about tech and tech-adjacent stuff. I sometimes contain a few words on the books I’m reading, but I don’t generally do book reviews. I’ll leave that to Amazon comments. If you want to see what books I am reading, take a look at this page. It is up-to-date… don’t ask me for my “want to read” list, as it is too long 😱

As always, thanks for reading and please reach out for feedback. I have absolutely no problem discussing something I write or say on a podcast. I invite debate, as long as it is civil, as I feel we both learn something like that. PS: I’m toying with inline comments through Mastodon or something, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet.

Last week, I mentioned an article about the lack of regulation and laws in Latin America surrounding online scraping and data usage to train AI and other systems. Well, I’ve been trying to get a project off the ground for a couple of years now that, sadly, hasn’t got past an initial phase. With things changing for me regarding stability, I am (we are) trying to reboot the project over the coming months. I’ll let you know more about it in the future. Still, the project will provide information like that discussed in the above article, tailored to the Caribbean and in a more practical format for consumption and use by businesses and individuals. I look forward to speaking more about it here. I’ll profit by extending the research section of the blog to include a lot of background information, backchannel, and other internal discussions that I hope will add value for you. More later.

Reading

A little while ago, I took advantage of a sale of a book that I’d had on my reading list and purchased it. The book Number Go Up by Zeke Faux is about the crypto, blockchain, and web3 industry and spends a lot of time discussing the goings on at FTX. I’m about halfway through, and I can confirm that this book makes me hate these crooks even more. In an interview that was largely glossed over at the time, SBF admitted that the whole industry is run like a Ponzi scheme. He blathers on about a box, and people putting stuff in a box and that box is worthless, but the fact that others are convinced that the stuff in the box ‘might’ be worth something starts a bubble and a Ponzi. When this is pointed out to him, he replies, “I think there’s like a sort of depressing amount of validity …” before cutting short his response.

From the minute I heard of crypto, I felt it was too good to be true. The problem is convincing those neck-deep in it with investments that are, admittedly, currently earning money, which is a tough prospect. They are wilfully blind to their part in the collective theft that is being committed because it makes them some money. Not to mention the disastrous effects on the climate.

I will no doubt repeat this exercise when we dissect the Generative AI industry.

Other than that, I’ve been following the ongoing discussions on Internet governance and the Global Digital Compact (GDC). Things are getting very fishy at the UN, and it appears like a power grab is in process. The risk is a very worrying outcome of a centralisation of power around the UN and some of its more influential members in how the Internet will be governed in the future. AI has been one of the influences that accelerated this process. Internet governance has decades of historical work and outcomes that help defend against this attack on governance. AI, unfortunately, doesn’t, and as a result, it has left an opening for this power grab.

Thanks for reading, and have a great week.