Highly personalised ads imply highly personalised data about you. Despite what Facebook/Meta and the intrusive advertising apologists say, collecting, storing and profile-building that information is a huge security risk to each and every individual on the internet. And yes, I know there have not been any “known” breaches reported, but known is doing a lot of lifting in that statement.

After more than five years of extensive litigation by noyb, the German Kartellamt and decisions by the EDPB and CJEU, it seems that Meta finally complies with EU privacy laws:

5 years of litigation: Meta apparently switches to consent for behavioral ads

Many think that policy advisors in the EU Commission develop policy ideas like they’re given in Christmas crackers. That couldn’t be further from the truth, as policy is shaped mainly by research and findings. And whether you agree or disagree with eventual legislation, the foundations of it are not some verbal fart of a career policy wonk with incentives to climb the greasy pole of EU politics.

Firstly, I’d like to point you to a document from the European Commission, the Study on the impact of recent developments in digital advertising on privacy, publishers and advertisers.

The Executive Summary lists many conclusions and observations, with one that is particularly interesting and not widely understood:

There is limited evidence to suggest that the efficiency and efficacy gains of advertising products that rely on personal data and profiling outweigh the interference with individuals’ fundamental rights and consumer rights in addition to the reported negative societal impacts. A large amount of academic research has focused on demonstrating that the way that digital advertising works today has significant impacts on privacy, data protection, democracy, society and the environment. However, there is a lack of independent analysis to assess the costs and benefits of using personal data and profiling in advertising.

And this:

Lack of transparency in digital advertising limits evidence-based decision-making because advertisers lack independent data to assess the performance of digital advertising. This strengthens the position of players with strong market power and deters advertisers from switching to emerging alternatives that are less intrusive, even though there is evidence that some advertisers would prefer to rely on models that minimise the processing of unnecessary personal data. More independent data about the performance of alternative models compared to the status quo is needed to encourage widespread adoption among advertisers and publishers.

The efficacy of online advertising has always been bullshit and a mechanism of wealth extraction from advertisers and targeted individuals alike. It is time to expose it for what it is —essentially a scam.

5 August 2023 — French West Indies

I spent most of the week organising things for my business and continued with the last bits of research for the paper I’m writing. I’m still a little unfocused and distracted, but I’m getting through it better than I have been lately.

I do often wonder how it works for other people. Do they sit at the computer and start working on what needs doing? Do they have an impulse to get around to working on the checklist they’ve done? I’d love to know because that is so far from how my brain works.

I had an immovable task last week, and I thought I’d start it, but it was impossible for several days until the deadline was upon me. I thought, ok, I’ll start a little and give myself room only to do a little of it, then stop or do something else. What actually ensued is that as soon as I’d started it, I couldn’t stop it until it was finished.

I cleaned my deck with a pressure washer this morning, and like the task in the week, it was precisely the same. As soon as I’d started to do the first bit, allowing myself a break if I wanted, then I ended up not only doing it all, but I washed a concrete platform that I have around the back of the house that had accumulated dirt and other grime, then threw in for good measure four plastic chairs that needed a good clean. I spent all morning doing this.

I earned my ti’punch.

Reading

My reading of the books I mentioned continues, and I’m progressing well. Sometimes I feel too tired in the evening, but on the whole, I dedicate a little bit of time to the task every day.

If you’re like me, you’ve heard of, with horror, the proposed/launched project called Worldcoin. You’ve seen my thoughts, but I thought I’d share an excellent article on the project. Molly White’s newsletter does a good job of introducing and explaining the reasons why you might want this project to fail. I think it is ridiculous and extremely naive to believe that this would not be a massive target for scammers, criminals and mafia-type syndicates to exploit the vulnerable. Let’s hope some sense prevails.

My disdain of Facebook (or “Meta” if you prefer) is well known. I stumbled upon this article, and I think you should read it, regardless of your position vis a vis Mark Zuckerberg.

Of note

For those of you who use or have used the Eurostar train service between London and Paris, a consortium(paywalled) is trying to set up a rival service through the same tunnel and over the same tracks. There are a lot of ducks to get lined up (regulation, types of trains, capacity, etc), but it might be interesting.

We’re getting into the holiday season, so things might be a little slow on the news front for a few weeks.

Have a good week.

A bit of an up-and-down week, to be honest. I’ve been doing a lot of organising and thinking about how I am going to focus on work and personal life over the coming years. Rather like last week, I have had a number of ups and downs, which seems to be par for the course for me.

My writing of the paper has come along a little with my thoughts and plan more crystallised. I hope to spend a bit more time breaking the back of the writing this week. It’ll be dreadful, but like Hemingway said, “The first draft of anything is shit”.

I’ve been accepted on (yet) another training course. This time it is about trade statistics and is a complementary course to the one I have already completed. Whilst these courses are not always 100% aligned with what I’m doing day-to-day, they provide me with a broader view of how the economy functions. That is valuable when considering how technology affects business and the broader economy.

An opinion piece was published in The Register, “Social media is too much for most of us to handle”, discussing Dunbar’s number and the possible limit on social interactions. I’ve written about it before here. I talked about how small-scale community hubs and social clubs dotted the landscape in the 70s and 80s without explaining what I meant.

These loosely organised clubs and groups provided a social interaction for small groups to share interests and a little time together. Mothers would lug along their kids, who would play together, and chat/do things with other mothers in similar situations. They would exchange ideas, tips, gossip, and even trade items like clothing, etc. These groups never got unmanageable, even if they could get “out of hand” now and again from strong personality clashes. But even during those times of crisis, because they were small and the interaction was face-to-face, they never got so out of hand as to become dangerous.

Social media is the opposite of this. It is cramming as many people in the same room, ignoring fundamental human limits, and ignoring any purpose. Eyeballs mean ads. That’s it. There’s nothing altruistic or “town square” about any of it. It is simply a wealth transfer from anyone to their pockets. One day we’ll wake up, I guess 🤷‍♂️.

I do want to see the end of social media as it exists in its current form, and I’d like it to be as painful as possible for the enablers of genocide, harassment, and suicides, just to name a few negative impacts. Mastodon’s idea of small groups looks like a good idea on the surface, but in reality, people flock to one instance, and the same cycle of enshittification will begin.

I’ve been marking papers for the end-of-year tests for my students. I’m always surprised how, on the face of it, simple instructions can be interpreted and misinterpreted. Each student can develop a completely different idea based on the question. Although to be fair, I tend to set open-ended questions to make the students think a little and not just repeat what was discussed in class or on the course notes. I’m not a severe marker, preferring to give encouragement rather than reprimand. I have one set left to mark and will do that this Monday.

Reading

I have continued reading A World Transformed, and I am finding it quite eye-opening. Again, I can’t stress enough that if you have even a cursory interest in the subject, you should pick up this book and read it. It might make you uncomfortable and probably, as in my case, make you quite angry, particularly when you hear some of the absolutely abject and vile things being said by the likes of DeSantis. (I refuse to link to it, this gives it extra steam).

I’d started, and let slip, a book about the birth of the modern internet. It’s from Brian McCullough, of Techmeme Ride Home podcast fame. It’s a good read, and I’m looking forward to finishing it in a week or so.

I’m piling through lots of papers on web3, Web 3.0 and tourism, all in the name of finishing the CIRVATH paper. I should probably stop now, as I’m pretty sure I have amassed enough stuff.

I’ve just started to read this open-access book on media use in life. Entitled Media Use in Digital Everyday Life, the book asks how we navigate media after the mass adoption of smartphones, social media and other technologies. I’m looking forward to it.

Of note

Threads is still not available in the EU. Plenty has been discussed about this, mainly from those used to being invaded with personal data stealing ads, not understanding how Europeans think about privacy. I think it is a blessing in disguise, personally, but then again, I’m pretty much against anything coming out of Menlo Park. Interestingly, user numbers have fallen off a cliff, despite a couple of rushed updates to improve the user experience. Circling down the toilet would be better, but out of 4.5 billion internet-connected people, there’s still plenty of gullibility, sadly!

Despite writing a well-received article on cybersecurity and feeling that I had finally cracked it regarding writing and productivity, it all went to shit.

I took a break as several things have been, frankly, overwhelming.

Without going into personal territory, I seem to live between extremes, with very little in the middle zone. It’s either all excellent or all dreadful. There will be some changes to my working week that I’m looking forward to, but I’m not giving up on the dream of writing and producing great articles and even research papers. I’m finishing an essay for a tourism business school, and with some luck, I’ll finish it in the next couple of weeks.

Reading

I finished iWoz, and to be fair, it was dragging on a little and, by the end, was a little bit boring. Although, right until the end, the book sounded just like him, and I’d be surprised to hear that his text had been heavily edited. On the good side, the feeling of computer nostalgia was present till the end, and I loved it. I’d recommend the book to anyone wanting to know a little more about how the computer revolution started and how circumstances and luck played an enormous part.

As a side note, if you want to have the complete story of the Macintosh, try this website that was eventually turned into a book: Revolution in the Valley.

I finished the Foundation series. Very entertaining. Now I’m looking for the next set of novels to read. As I’ve said before, Asimov is one of my favourites, and I still haven’t read everything he has written, so I might start to have a look there. Perhaps the Robot series. They look interesting.

In the meantime, I’ve started to read a book about slavery called A World Transformed. I think it is our duty to try to understand a little more about how, through the most organised system of kidnap and forced labour, the global north has benefited and still benefits to this day on the back of literally millions and millions. Living in the Caribbean only makes this more important and visceral to me.

I’m looking forward to digging in, and it has not disappointed me, with the author not shying away from a very emotive and difficult subject.

I need to pick up the pace on some of the other serious texts I’ve started. I’ll list them here next time, perhaps.

Of note

A new (anti?) social network was birthed between my last note and this one. It is called Threads and is a Twitter rip-off with fewer tools and few Nazis. That will change, of course. I mean both things.

Threads is Facebook’s, I mean ‘Meta’s’, second attempt at a text-based social network leveraging the social graph of Instagram. The first iteration failed spectacularly. This version seems to have gained traction, but there are serious doubts as to the longevity of that. I can’t see into the future, but I suspect this product will live or die on its ability to generate ad revenue.

Zuckerberg is only a one-trick pony. Pushing Ads into people’s faces is all he cares about and can do. Threads will inevitably get ads after its ad-free honeymoon period that is only there to initially trick people onto the site.

Such a drastic change to the user experience might be enough to discourage many away from it. Or its cannibalisation of Instagram might not bring as much revenue to the king of ads. And like most kings, he has not your welfare at heart; he has only his own.

Interestingly, the ‘Metaverse’ has virtually disappeared from his vocabulary recently. I’m not surprised. It was all smoke and mirrors and bluster. As soon as the sums on ads didn’t add up —an exponentially smaller target market— it was dead in the water. A floating corpse winding down a muddy river.

Lastly, the big cage match might become a “literal dick-measuring contest”. I thought it couldn’t get worse. It did. FFS.

I finally got around to finishing off the newsletter in between training sessions and the odd site visit for a client.

I’m pretty happy with the way it went. It was succinct despite being over 2500 words. I’d originally written it, or at least the basis of it, as a report for a project a year or so ago.

I decide to get it up to date and rewrite a few sections to consider changes in the region.

I then published it in my newsletter and on LinkedIn.

I’m quite surprised how it was received, to be honest. Nearly 2000 views and many reads on the newsletter platform, netting me a few new subscribers.

Reading

For my morning read, I started a book I bought a long time ago that I just didn’t get around to reading. iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon.

It’s a fun book, and as someone who has met Steve Wozniak and got to chat with him for a few minutes, it reads exactly like he talks. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is just a transcript of a recording cleaned up a little for grammar.

For me, it highlights the fundamental difference between those founders of the tech scene and the vile maggots of today.

I’d like us to get back to some of that feeling and sentiment of wonder and discovery. And without sounding like an old man shouting at clouds, I think we’ve lost a little of that doing something to push and learn more, share more and try to figure out how and why something is. The money men, startup bro culture and the cancer of adverts have fundamentally polluted the internet, and it is something we’re unlikely to get back.

Nearly two-thirds of the way through the last Foundation book. I’d better start looking for something else to read soon.

Of note

When I met Woz a few years ago, we exchanged business cards, and I have treasured it ever since. It is a sleek metal business card with an interesting design based on punch card holes for his phone number. I’ve never called it and would never disturb someone out of the blue like that.

I’ve been teaching small businesses the uses of GenAI, and I have to say, this is one of the rare times that I have seen such interest and such understanding about how it can be used in business from complete beginners.

I labour the point about laws, copyrights, hallucinations etc, and the response has been really good.

The transcripts of the last communications coming out of the Titan submersible are terrifying. Best to avoid them.