😱 It’s already September! I’m not entirely sure where the earlier part of the year went. A lot of things happened in the news, but many events also made for a busy period for me up until now. Spoiler: it doesn’t look like it’ll be any calmer, either!

I wanted to get back to some of the thinking I have been doing about governance and the open web. I mentioned a project last week from a team that decided to look into Fediverse governance and offer a guide to setting up and operating Social Web services by looking at the technology, moderation, legal risks and other topics important to good governance. The document is long, and I still haven’t had time to read it all, so I’ll refrain from providing an AI summary, as I doubt it could capture some of the subtleties of such a document. I hope to have time this week, but it depends on other project deadlines.

Regardless, this project and others seem to be spurring a resurgence of interest in the open web, specifically the social web. Social networks, whatever your view of them, have galvanised the public and been the gateway drug to the internet for many. Unfortunately, they have been enough of a drug in their own right to allow the social network platforms to fence in their users, discouraging them from going elsewhere —and there are plenty of other places on the internet to go. This is often termed the Walled Garden… “Everything is nice and neat here, so you don’t need to look over the fence.” This has been done through network effects. You tend to go to a place where the others are, more accurately, where the people you know or like reside, hence the ‘effect’ of the network. Leaving such a place is generally too difficult for most, which instantly changes the balance of power away from the users to the platforms. The platforms leveraged the real-life networks to create the walled garden digital networks and then lock everyone inside.

The open web, or social web, completely upends this, as you can congregate in a place that has all the people you know and love, and you can easily leave to go to a different place that, perhaps, aligns with your point of view or social affinities more closely, without losing access to your friends. The major platforms know this, and they are doing what they can to head this off at the pass, and they will embrace, extend and extinguish. It’s in their nature. Remember the tale of the frog and the scorpion?

With Twitter —or X if you prefer— being shut downin Brazil, there has been a substantial increase in new users to other social platforms, most notably Bluesky. If you have used it, you will notice the resemblance to Twitter and its residents’ overall fun and snarky nature. It’s not for me, but I pop my head around the door now and again to see if anyone interesting is in there. One thing I think they are doing that is interesting and follows the theme of governance and management of platforms I have going on here is its latest announcement to give users more control over the use of their posts. One major criticism of Twitter was how quote-tweeting became a weaponised sport. Bluesky is trying to address this apparent shortcoming by allowing users to detach their original post from quote tweeters (is that the correct term for Bluesky? Checks notes… apparently it is “posts”) and hide replies. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out and whether it dissuades poor behaviour, or dissuades using the feature entirely. It is a laudable effort, and I hope it is the former and not the latter, but if the internet has taught me anything, it brings out the worst in some people. I’m bookmarking this to revisit in the future.

I’m a fan of the open web, not because I’m an old-timer who used the Internet before HTTP was implemented —ok, some of that— but because it allows a much richer environment to try out new stuff and develop new ideas. You can’t have escaped the newsletter revolution that happened a few years ago, everyone and his dog (including me) has a newsletter, and many of them are hosted on platforms like Substack (Nazi Bar) or other popular ones like Ghost. Ghost gained popularity when Substack outed themselves as being OK with enabling Nazis to make money, and it is a good platform. It’s somewhat expensive if hosted and a little too technical for most to self-host. 2024 ushered in their support of Activity Pub (the federated social web protocol) and have recently announced the implementation of two-way communication through inbound likes to enable people to publish and readers to react through tools like (I’m guessing) Mastodon, ensuring those likes get back to the original post. This is interesting, but a development I’m a little sceptical about for reasons of incentives and eventual ad-tracking. I reserve judgement for the moment, and I’ll try to learn more about it and how it works.

Reading

Microsoft recently released a study into the use of generative AI in the “real world”. You can find it here. Perhaps if I have some free time, I’ll write up some of the notes I made on the report. In the meantime, here’s a couple of quick thoughts about it:

• One, the report never defines what “real world” actually means for the study and the studies referenced. So I’m not sure what value the moniker “real world” has given that my “real world” working environment is almost certainly very different to yours.
• The outcomes of the studies discussed in this paper are less than a stellar endorsement of generative AI in the workplace. Some examples:

… agents with the assistant resolved 14% more issues per hour than those without the assistant. Consistent with what has been observed in some lab studies (e.g., Noy and Zhang 2023), the largest impact was on novice and low-skilled workers, with very little effect on experienced or highly-skilled workers

Wiles and Horton (2024) explored how having an LLM generate a first draft of a job posting affected postings and hiring on a large online labor market. They found that the AI tool decreased time spent writing posts and increased the number of posts completed but had no effect on the number of hires.

Researchers found that on average, those with Copilot for Microsoft 365 read 11% fewer individual emails and spent 4% less time interacting with them, compared to people without Copilot

Moreover, to preserve privacy, the study observes activity, not the content created, so it cannot study quality or how well output aligns with people’s goals or intents

On coding:

However, developers also voiced significant concerns. The top worry (29%) was that AI might not be as helpful as expected. Another major concern (21%) was that AI might introduce defects or vulnerabilities, emphasizing the need for thorough validation and human oversight. Job security was a worry for 10% of respondents, reflecting fears of AI encroaching on their roles.

In contrast, no substantial difference was observed between Copilot and non-Copilot groups for the less familiar task.

In other reading, I learned that Musk’s troubles continue:

Brazilian court orders suspension of Elon Musk’s X after it missed deadline - The Guardian

I’ve already mentioned an excellent regular read of news from The Continent. They continue to do outstanding work. The article about Bill Gates’ “farming expertise” is actually about Tech Bro Solutionism, and is a fantastic case study into why tech bros should be a little more humble and learn from others. The consequences of their actions are and could be devastating.

Direct link to the pdf.

Speaking of bros thinking they know more about stuff than anyone else, James Hoffmann has an exquisite takedown of Science Bro Andrew Hubermann, who exudes, “I know one science; therefore, I know ALL science”. What is he really offering… of course, protocols on supplements to make you a “better” human… Nothing at all to do with bettering his bank account. Silly me.

The last article I wanted to highlight is another egregious use of technology, which I have been discussing with clients and during training. The use of surveillance cameras for face recognition at the 2024 Olympics and now in general use across Paris. The installed cameras will operate until at least March 2025, around seven months after the games have finished, including the Paralympics. Two points merit discussion, one being obvious. Why will they be in operation months after the games, and what will happen once that time is up? The second interrogation is about their accuracy and the less than exemplary record of these systems already in use in places like London, UK, where false positives of non-whites clearly show the uselessness of these systems. This article gets somewhat into that discussion.

Written from the heart and with sweat and tears. Have a great week.

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.

If you’ve been following along with what I get up to over the last couple of years, you will have noticed a change in focus. Particularly during the last few months you may have detected a certain amount of ambivalence to the tech industry as it stands today. Some of you might even go as far to say that I have become a little hostile to big tech recently, and, if im being brutally honest, I’d say that you’re just about right regarding that. I think big tech has become a force for bad for the majority of us, something that is diametrically opposed to the original ideas behind tech during its development and rise to everyday use during the 70s and 80s. Big tech is no longer about progressing the world, it is about progressing the net worth of an elite few. That’s not to say that I am totally off tech and what it can do, quite the opposite, I’m actually quite optimistic about the capabilities and the force for good that it could be. But to achieve that it needs to have a crisis that will fundamentally change the way technology is conceived, developed and deployed in society at scale. I don’t think we’re there yet, but I suspect we will get there a little sooner rather than later.

If I had to point the finger of blame at big tech, it would be in two areas. The first is the obvious one and an area that I have written about a lot over the years, Social Media. I’m not against it per se, but its current implementation is a massive global-scale experiment that hasn’t and isn’t going too well. I think society will have to decide whether the type of mass social media is a net good for society or not. But to decide that society needs to understand what social media really is, and I don’t think we are there yet. There are signs of frustration and rebellion, but they are contained and small in nature and based on a misunderstanding of the what and who of the “product”. It’s more subtle than “If you’re paying for it, you’re the product”.

The second area is that of advertising. For the vigilant, this area is intrinsically linked to the first area, as the last sentence of the previous paragraph hints. For the record, I am not against advertising as such. I understand the use of it, and I understand how it can drive awareness and eventually sales, and is vital for businesses that are breaking into new markets or new territories. I’m railing against unfettered, uncontrolled and rabid Surveillance Capitalism.¹ Highly targeted and highly privacy-invading advertising is nothing but a scam, where the advertiser and the person being targeted are at opposite ends of a process where the middleman screws everyone. Don’t believe me? Come on, you should know by now. I’ve cited this EU paper several times because it details just how invasive highly targeted ads are, how they are not as effective as the advertising platforms would have you believe (surprise, surprise), and they are privacy destroying on many levels and will eventually provide a means for you to be targeted in a cybersecurity dragnet.² This type of advertising is a cancer, and it is destroying the internet, and we should all do something to help stop it.

I thought I’d republish a blog post I wrote for the Virtual School of Internet Governance after completing the course earlier this year.^{3 4} If Internet Governance is something you are interested in, or you’d just like to learn a little more about the Internet, its origins, how it’s governed and much more, you should check it out.

See you in the next newsletter.

Blog post:

The internet as we know it is under attack. It is under attack on several fronts, including, most notably, attacks on its openness from various countries out of fear. Governments of many nations are implementing regulations and imposing operating rules on the Internet’s infrastructure, or imposing rules to ensure the Internet fits into their particular point of view. For many years, China has been implementing and enhancing its “Great Firewall of China” with some success ⁵. The United States of America is in the process of trying to ban TikTok over its alleged proximity to the Chinese regime.⁶ It has also, like the United Kingdom, implemented rules to decommission any telecommunications equipment from companies like Huawei and ZTE from being deployed in their respective territories, again from alleged state security fears.^{7 8} Any time there is unrest in some countries, like India, Iran, Iraq, or Venezuela, to name only a few, Internet shutdowns occur to stifle communication, organisation, and dissent.⁹ Even the once liberal governments like the United Kingdom are showing signs of lurching towards the setup and operation of Internet controls that go above and beyond all reason.¹⁰ Some of it is dressed up in the name of being “to save the kids”, but mostly, it is born out of pure fear of lack of control of the unknown.

But whether you think these rules, regulations and operational controls are justified or not, you can’t deny that the Internet as we once knew it is in a state of being manipulated and changed, and not necessarily for good. I suspect the outcome will be a worse Internet than the one we have, and I suspect our freedoms will be further eroded in this new Internet. But despite that, why are we at such a critical point with the Internet? I wish I had a simple answer to that question, and to be fair, I’m not sure if I know or understand why. And I suspect many of us don’t either. The Internet in ten years will be a different animal from what it is today, in the same way the Internet of ten years ago was a different animal.

The Internet, for many, is Social Media. Closed-off, filtered and algorithmically distilled database views on a set of freely offered and surreptitiously extracted data on something like a third to a half of the world. Many users content themselves with this watered-down and safe-feeling view of the Internet, not realising or caring that the “real” Internet is out there. We’ve done a fantastic job in scaring people away from the real Internet by talking about the Dark Web and all the bad things that will indeed happen to you if you ever venture into those neighbourhoods, in precisely the same way that we have ruined the possibility for young people to go out and venture around the surrounding communities for fear of immediate death.

The truth is, as always, somewhere in between and not quite as extreme as portrayed.

As individuals, what can we do about this? How can we be better citizens of the Internet and help others become better citizens of this shared space that promised so much and delivered as much, if not more, good and bad? And how can we participate in making a better Internet for the world and not just for the privileged tech bros that are systematically destroying it while extracting all the wealth from the rest of us?

I’d say that education is at least half the battle. As we become more educated on a topic and more open to understanding, empathy and nuanced discourse follow. I’m an old-timer on the Internet, and I have used it for many years, from the early days when the Internet of the World Wide Web didn’t exist. I saw the birth, use, and mass adoption of many of the systems and protocols we use daily. These are technical elements and something we, as early adopters, were comfortable with without really thinking of the consequences that would eventually and inevitably come with the generalisation of the Internet. Many of us, both young and old, lacked or lack the necessary understanding of the elements other than the technology to truly understand how the Internet has and is affecting the world. We are still in a global experiment that hasn’t been designed with a hypothesis in mind. The Internet just is.

I recently completed the Virtual School of Internet Governance course and obtained the offered certificate to broaden my understanding and take me out of my comfort zone. This online-only self-paced training course is designed to open your eyes to aspects you might not have previously considered. You might even find yourself questioning your knowledge and beliefs, as I did in some topic areas. What you absolutely will do, though, is learn and have access to an absolute ton of information about the origins, the mechanisms, the politics, the social and legal aspects and many other areas that you might not have thought are linked to the Internet. As a free course, the quality, and quantity of information is staggering and staggeringly good. You get to meet and debate with experts in the topics covered, and should you wish to go further, the contacts and exchanges made over the course of the ten weeks will help you develop in the Internet Governance space.

I have made Internet Governance a central part of my work, and it was an excellent follow-up from the ARIN Fellowship.

If we want a better Internet, we owe it to each other to invest in its governance and development.

With gratitude to Glenn McKnight and Alfredo Calderon.

The Future is Digital Newsletter is an ongoing discussion about tech, the world, and my place in it. You are welcome to share it with others who may be interested.

Thanks for being a supporter. I wish you a splendid day.

/committedtodisk

Source: Pixabay

I like the philosophy stating that writing is thinking and that to write clearly, one must think clearly. I do neither. I’m neither a good writer nor a good thinker. What I do, though, is think about the big picture and piece together seemingly unrelated threads into a reasonably cohesive structure that holds up to a bit of scrutiny. Maybe not a peer review, but that’s not why I write here. I write to process my thoughts and flesh those out, sometimes in real-time as I’m writing. It’s not the most scientific of methods, but it favours my type of neurological quirkiness, and, to be fair, the email newsletter format is not the best forum for that type of research. Without this outlet to write about the topics that frustrate me so much, I’d be pretty bored. Consequently, I try to make complex topics seem a little simpler without shying away from the details, with as many supporting links and examples as necessary. For the other stuff I like to write about, this year saw me start (restart?) a new personal blog where I can express other personal thoughts on things that are not on topic here.

On to this newsletter edition. It’s one about regulation (don’t run away yet —it might be interesting 😉), specifically regulation that affects the internet and the coming wave of regulation that we haven’t quite got to grips with yet. The Internet is about to change radically. For better or for worse, I have no idea, and I wish I had a crystal ball and a bit of spare cash to make a huge bet. But I don’t. However, what seems patently clear is that the Internet is about to be regulated by the world’s largest economies. Some have already done so. States like China and Russia have, in all but name, created a walled-off, splintered Internet for themselves and their citizens. The EU has regulated several major issues that have, again in all but name, forced the entire world to fall into line. The United States has continued to shy away from regulation, thereby creating an environment for innovation (or so it tells us). I wanted to discuss some real-world leanings and the aftermath of the GDPR, trying to provide some context and the basis of a discussion topic if you’d like to discuss it. Disclaimer: I’m not a GDPR expert nor legally trained. I’m piecing together various facts and observations from the work I’ve been doing in Internet Governance and my on-the-ground experience with MSMEs.

I hope you enjoy the read. Ping me @virek@mastodon.socail.

The GDPR is dead. Long live the GDPR

They said GDPR was the end for small businesses, at least those that used and dealt with personal information in the EU. They said it would overly burden them and make it difficult for them to function. They said it would further entrench the monopolies. It was bad, bad, bad, as far as the eye could see.

Some wrote about how the “moats” of the big companies would protect them, and hence, regulation would only ensure that those businesses would thrive, having been helped by the regulation from the path-clearing and summary executions of small businesses thanks to the EU. They still write this stuff. They still believe it.

The thing is, they were right, but for all the wrong reasons. So what actually happened?

From my perspective, observing MSMEs in an admittedly small economy, virtually nothing changed. Rien. Nada. Nichts. Zilch. Nothing. Small businesses carried on as before, with no discernable change. There wasn’t a sudden decline in the number of MSMEs worldwide, especially in the EU. It has been pretty constant, with the usual ups and downs since the legislation was implemented. Though not a source, Statista has a visualisation that shows this. There is some discussion on the adverse effects of innovation in the EU as a result of the legislation, but these papers are finding it challenging to determine if any observed fluctuations are a direct result of the legislation or other external factors. From an anecdotal perspective, Europe doesn’t appear to be any less “innovative” than before.

It’s evident that small businesses didn’t sweat it. They knew full well they’d carry on as before, changing things progressively over time. No rush. No panic. There was no immediate rush to entirely change their businesses at the operational level, aside from a bit of thinking about this new risk and what it might mean to them over the coming months and years. Basically, It was business as usual.

How do I know this? For one, I am on the ground next to these small businesses and have been for most of my working life. I’ve seen them shrug at this legislation and tell me point-blank, “… we’ll wait and see”. And I’ve seen them do absolutely nothing. Not even a small audit to attempt to reveal exposure to the risks the regulation inevitably brings. And I know why. They cannot afford it as a capital outlay and don’t have the time to waste. You think large enterprise bosses are busy. Spend some time with MSMEs, and you’ll understand what busy is.

Secondly, as the legislation was being debated and passed from discussion to vote to implementation, there were many thousands of consultants with no experience (and limited knowledge) rubbing their hands together, hoping to make a killing off consultancy fees to help businesses comply with this legislation. Twenty million Euros or 4 per cent of global turnover was a sweet, sweet incentive, or so they thought. Small consultancies, too, thought they’d get in on the gravy train before it left the station. I myself was tempted, but I decided against it, feeling that it would be a hard sell to the tiny enterprises that constitute the French West Indies (who were directly in the firing line) and those in the wider Caribbean caught in the net, so to speak. Something felt off for me, so I didn’t pursue it seriously. Hindsight proves I was right not to invest too much time and energy, and businesses didn’t employ the consultants.

This all begs the question, “Where are we today with regard to GDPR?”

Status Quo. Nothing has substantially changed. The consultants and consultancies specialised have largely crawled back under their rocks, awaiting the next grift cycle, and the small businesses have all magically become compliant (mostly) without doing much.

“Magically” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that phrase.

Gradually and then suddenly¹, all the software, the tools, and the processes that businesses rely on to operate all got updates, patches, and replacements and became compliant. Businesses updated, patched, and replaced software through natural attrition and good governance cycles. The whole value chain became compliant, and therefore, so did MSMEs.

And then everyone carried on as though nothing had happened.

It’s just like the Year 2000 Bug. It was the literal end of the world for some commentators. The banks would collapse, there’d be food shortages, riots, and all sorts of apocalyptic scenarios were being described and subscribed to. I know I was there. I personally certified all the software we used in the company I was working with at the time and worked with the developers to amend any inconsistencies and errors during a six-month test and implementation project. (TLDR: it all worked fine). But just like GDPR, nothing happened. It all just sort of fell into place without issue.

So how did big business entrench its holding on the market? If the legislation’s critics were right but for the wrong reasons, what conclusion can we get from the GPDR since its introduction in 2016?

Some consider GDPR to be a failure, agreeing with the above, but it is because of non-enforcement, not because of a failure of policy.

One can argue on the merits or not of the specifics, but to do so is to ignore the spirit and the overarching aim of the GDPR, thereby completely misunderstanding why the GDPR was introduced. There are two elements to understand when discussing the GDPR and the EU. The GDPR is a blunt instrument to coax businesses into doing the right thing concerning personally identifiable data on individuals. It is explicit in the types of data it covers, but it is a set of principles to guide businesses that collect, process, store, and share that data. Encouraging them to do those things reasonably. “Reasonable”, defined as “don’t abuse the person concerned with your access to that data”. The second element is that the EU is more concerned about defending individual EU citizen liberties than it is in defending state or business liberties. It is often mischaracterised as the middle ground between the free-for-all of the US regulatory environment and the all-controlling of the Chinese model. That’s just too reductive. The EU was set up post-WWII with the explicit aim of regional economic integration that would promote, protect and ensure peace in Europe. Peace through deeply integrated trade. In Europe. Not elsewhere.²

But back to enforcement.

For as long as the GDPR has been in force, companies like Meta, Google, and many others have been abusing our trust and ignoring the GDPR, and to boot (paraphrasing William Gibson), enforcement is already here —it’s just not evenly distributed yet. These companies have set themselves up in European jurisdictions that are not motivated to press for full enforcement for many reasons (Hint: Economic). This has allowed them to continue doing business on the backs of our data, freedoms, and privacy without regard to the idea of the GDPR. And what a lucrative business it has been. Occasionally, the odd slap on the wrist happens, but this is brushed off as the “cost of doing business”.

As I was writing this, the EU announced a 1.8B€ fine for Apple’s anticompetitive practices in the EU’s music streaming business. If I remember rightly, this is a result of an investigation that started in 2019 and has nothing to do with the highly discussed Digital Markets Act (DMA). Apple made 1.05B$ per day in the year ended 31/12/2023.

The Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act enforced this week will likely be enforced differently and more aggressively. Apple’s insistence on removing PWAs (Progressive Web Apps) and bleating about having to comply with the regulation, its subsequent U-turn and the 404 I get when trying to open the Apple Newsroom page that shamelessly tried to defend their indefensible position are signs of the way the wind is blowing.

To paraphrase Game of Thrones (shamelessly): Enforcement is coming.

And, to be clear, I’m not championing any and all regulation as a good thing, and I do think there are aspects of the way the EU regulates that could be a bit more inclusive and less subject to the (literally) thousands of lobbyists employed by states, organisations and businesses, to have a chance at creating better legislation.

Monetisation and the death of the Internet (as we know it)

This is a bit of a rant. My apologies upfront.

Rampant monetisation has completely trashed the internet and been a driving force for a divided, divisive, and less interesting Internet. Just look at how the homogenisation of the design language of all the “social” apps has made them all look the same, ensuring that monetisation mechanisms are simplified and broken down into base elements. If their branding weren’t so visible, most would be hard-pressed to identify if it was Instagram, Bluesky or Twitter (X if you’re that way inclined, but the URL is twitter.com).

When I think of monetisation of the internet, I’m talking about how we, as humans, have been reduced to functional blocks of content creation and content consumption. Nothing more. There is little room on “big-Internet” for the small weird projects of social good, the oddball things that used to exist, and the life-changing discoveries that were easily found previously. And, of course, when I say no room, I mean there is no attention available because attention is being sucked away by the 30-second video clips of abject nonsense and awful or outright dangerous “content”.

This dehumanising of the internet visitor is one of the factors that help explain why the internet has become so polarised and so violent. If we’re not human any more, then we’re not hurting anyone when we’re violently threatening each other. But it’s not reality, and we know it. We feel it. But we cannot control it. Tech, as currently deployed, is dehumanising us, making unpaid productivity modules slotted into the platform’s impossible endless growth targets. These modules have broken us down so much into the basic elements of creation/consumption that they (we) are as expendable as toilet paper.

This is not the Internet I want. This is why I’m getting involved in Internet governance. I’ll keep you up to date.

I’m not the only one thinking about this. Watch this video from Taylor Lorenz, a journalist who recently released a book called Extremely Online.

Generative AI (again!)

I wanted to write about generative AI again, but at over two thousand words once more, I think I’ll bump it to the next newsletter. I’ll give you a little teaser, though. The following was the working premise for discussion:

Generative AI is simultaneously the most significant opportunity for small businesses to get a helping hand and the biggest shit-show we’ve seen since the invention of the Internet (arguably equalling Social Media’s continued destruction).

Until next time.

The Future is Digital Newsletter is an ongoing discussion. Please feel free to share it with others who may be interested.

Thanks for being a supporter. I wish you an excellent day.

/committedtodisk