The subscription plan is a response to European Union policies and court rulings to restrict Meta’s data-collection practices.
I say go for it. We might find out what Social Networks are really worth then. I suspect not a lot.
2 September 2023 — French West Indies
I called this post transitions because I had a week that will hopefully set me up for a transition to something good for a while to come. It’s also a week where I have considered moving a few things around and supporting better causes than big technology companies.
I’m probably going to move this blog off WordPress soon and on to something more human in scale. It’s complicated, and I get a feeling of cognitive dissonance when talking about technology and the biggest of the biggest companies. I like tech and have been employed in it for more than 30 years, but whenever you look into the detail, you find that as big tech firms grow and as they can exert their influence, they become more and more about wealth extraction and wealth displacement. Inciting and controlling money into their pockets and away from the pockets of the average person. Astronomical profits from the likes of Apple, on the back of layoffs and hiring freezes, show the true colours of organisations that want more money, not more employment or more engagement in the community. And although they create tools for us to make and sell stuff, the real wealth is in selling those tools. This is probably a topic for another post one day.
I’m unsure how to reason with all this, and this entry is a little scattered. I’m ok with that for the moment. As I gather my thoughts and collect and organise them, I’m sure I’ll write something else on the topic.
Another big transition is coming soon, but that will have to wait.
I cracked. I bought the first of the I, Robot series. There’s just something about Isaac Asimov that clicks with me for Science Fiction. I’ve only just started it, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to finish it soon.
I have plenty of other texts I’m reading, some boring and some interesting. I’m spending a little time going over sports science papers about tennis. Interesting that the majority that I have seen are from China. I would guess that there is a concerted effort to produce one or more Grand Slam winners in the near future.
I have a reasonably large music collection. Or rather, I like a lot of music and can access it using a streaming service. Before, it was an extensive CD collection with several vinyl records thrown in for good measure. I moved (transitioned) away from them when I moved abroad and couldn’t access the music I liked in physical form. As a result, I continued collecting through digital means, albeit with lesser quality. I’m rambling.
What I wanted to say is that I’ve been a fan of The Dandy Warhols for a long time. My brother put me on to them, and I have really enjoyed their music ever since. But recently, I was playing a playlist through one of the streaming services, and I heard a track that I hadn’t heard before.
The track is called The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. I have listened to the two versions on high-quality headphones, and the sound is so nice.
I’m sure I would have fallen on this track someday, but I’m grateful to the music service for surfacing it.
Have a great week.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!