I see thereâs an opinion piece in Stuff from the Chamber of Commerce saying the Wellington City Council should sell its stake in Wellington Airport, because it doesnât bring in that much (NZ$12 million per annum), and because Aucklandâs selling theirs.
Itâs not too dissimilar to calls for the Council to sell the Municipal Electricity Department a few decades ago, or any other post-Muldoon call about privatization.
Without making too much of a judgement, since I havenât inquired deeply into the figures, itâs interesting that the line often peddled by certain business groups, when they want governments to sell assets, is: âThey should run things like households, and have little debt.â
This never applies to themselves. When it comes to their own expansion, they say, âWe donât need to run things like households, we can finance this through debt.â
The same groups say that governments should be run more like businesses.
However, their advice is always for governments to be run like households.
Has it escaped them that they are different beasts?
I wouldnât mind seeing government entities run like businesses, making money for their stakeholders, and said so when I campaigned for mayor.
Doing this needs abandoning a culture of mediocrity at some of those entities. Some believe this is impossible within government, and there are credible examples, usually under former command economies. But then there are also decent examples of state-owned enterprises doing rather well, like Absolut, before they were sold off by the Swedish government. If you want something current, the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp. is one of the most profitable car makers on the planet.
The difference lies in the approach toward the asset.
But what do I know? I come from Hong Kong where the civil service inherited from the British is enviably efficient, something many occidentals seem to believe is impossibleâyet I live in a country where I can apply for, and get, a new passport in four hours. Nevertheless, that belief in inefficiency holds.
Change your mindset: things are possible with the right people. Donât be a Luddite.
And therein lies why Stuff and I are on different planets.
As you saw in the previous postâs postscripts, it is possible to upload videos of longer than one minute to Instagram, but Instagram may or may not let the public see them. If you want people to see your videos for sure, then keep them to the standard minute. But if you want to chance it, so far my experience is 50â50, and there’s no correlation with length. Like all things Facebook, there is no consistency, and you are at the whim of the technology and its questionable database integrity. Here are the ones that have worked, the first at 2â˛50âł, the second at 4â˛, the third at 3â˛51âł, and the fourth at 7â˛03âł (this had to be uploaded twice as Facebook hid the first attempt).
PS., April 28, 12.37 a.m.: A few more tries and the odds of a video lasting longer than one minute being visible to other Instagram users are definitely 1:2. The latest is this, at 7â˛53âł.
Don’t be surprised if these record zero views on Instagram. I believe their stats only count full views, and no one’s going to sit watching a video there for that long unless it’s particularly compelling.
P.PS., May 4: I attempted a 9â˛03âł video. No joy. Instagram will allow the upload but the actual process takes an incredibly long time. The progress bar goes back a few times. Eventually it says there is an error. In theory, I think it’s possible, but right now I haven’t managed to exceed 7â˛53âł.
Since Facebook bought Instagram, itâs been getting buggier, of course.
Iâve complained about Instagram uploading a series of posts in a totally different order to what I had (which, on ANZAC Day, made it difficult for anyone to follow the story I was trying to tell on my account when the order is 2, 1, 5, 4, 3, 6, 7).
Video (2) was an interesting one, because Instagram allowed me to post something that was 2 minutes, 6 seconds long, which it had never done before (or since).
I thought it odd at the time but given that it was twice as long as normal, I didnât complain. It allowed me to show more of the Air Force band performing ‘Au e ihuâ (Soldierâs Hymn).
I did complain about one particular video featuring our national anthem which Instagram would say was loading, then on checking again, it would vanish. I made three attempts over a two-hour period before it âstuckâ (video no. 3 in the sequence above). I had to wonder if Instagram was picking up the music and flagging it as a copyright violation: after all, YouTube flags static as copyright violations (hat tip to Retrorechercher).
Above: Instagram says these two are loading, but the one featuring our national anthem (the top one) kept vanishing. It never made it on to my account without three attempts.
This morning, on checking the stats, I noticed that no one had viewed the longer video, and, after asking some friends on Twitter, learned that Instagram blocked anyone from seeing it. Itâs like shadow-banning on Twitter: you can see your own stuff, but no one else can. Try it for yourselfâhere’s the link Instagram claims it’s at.
Look at the eighth post down. On my account (top), I can see it. When logged in as someone else (above), I can’t. Instagram’s version of shadow-banning?
I can still play it straight from Instagram on the web and on my phone.
You can give the MP4 a shot here (and note the URL, which is an Instagram one, and the duration). The thumbnail is here.
However, I canât embed the video the normal way, and any link that it lets me share results in a 404. It all feels very familiar, because this is the sort of bug that Facebook used to cook up, e.g. on days when you couldnât post, like, comment or share, or tag yourself in a photograph.
I might save the two-minute-long video separately in case thereâs a way you can tell that it was edited inside Instagram.
To sum up: Instagram will not load content in the same order you do (we already know this); it will permit much longer videos that exceed one minute, but if they let it through, no one will ever see it except you. We also know that Facebook will pump through any advertising on to Instagram, even in categories you have expressly asked not to be shown.
There you have it, Instagram in 2018.
PS., April 25, 1.19 a.m. GMT: I’ve just tried a 2 minute 50 second video, and it appears it is visible. For how long, I don’t know. Check it out here, or, if the embed’s visible below, have a look.
P.PS., 1.59 a.m. GMT:Looks like four minutes is fine, too. While the first one is still invisible, it does appear Instagram has lifted the one-minute limit, and that’s not something I can find documented anywhere. Still, I’m grateful, because it makes far more sense to show two- to four-minute vids.
P.P.PS., 8.54 a.m. GMT: Just tried one at seven minutes, and it’s hidden. Seems Instagram is very inconsistent on what it shows and what it doesn’t. Link is here (it won’t work) and the MP4 is here.
Boris Johnson: usually a talented delivery, but with conflicting substance.
I spotted The Death of Expertise at Unity Books, but I wonder if the subject is as simple as the review of the book suggests.
Thereâs a lot out there about anti-intellectualism, and we know itâs not an exclusively American phenomenon. Tom Nichols, the bookâs author, writes, as quoted in The New York Times, âAmericans have reached a point where ignorance, especially of anything related to public policy, is an actual virtue. To reject the advice of experts is to assert autonomy, a way for Americans to insulate their increasingly fragile egos from ever being told theyâre wrong about anything. It is a new Declaration of Independence: No longer do we hold these truths to be self-evident, we hold all truths to be self-evident, even the ones that arenât true. All things are knowable and every opinion on any subject is as good as any other.â
I venture to say that the “death of expertise” is an Anglophone phenomenon. Head into Wikipedia, for instance, and youâll find proof that the masses are not a good way to ensure accuracy, at least not in the English version. Head into the German or Japanese editions and you find fewer errors, and begin to trust the pages more.
Given that many of âthe peopleâ cannot discern what is âfake newsâ and what is not, or who is a bot and who is not, then itâs absolutely foolhardy to propose that they also be the ones who determine the trustworthiness of a news source, as Facebook is wont to do.
I canât comment as much on countries I have spent less time in, but certainly in the Anglosphere, Iâve seen people advance, with confidence and self-authority, completely wrong positions, ones not backed up by real knowledge. You only need to visit some software support forums to see online examples of this phenomenon.
When I visit Sweden, for instance, thereâs a real care from individuals not to advance wrongful positions, although I admit I am limited by my own circles and the brief time I have spent there.
Itâs not so much that we donât value expertise, itâs that the bar for what constitutes an expert is set exceptionally low. Weâre often too trusting of sources or authorities who donât deserve our reverence. And I wonder if it comes with our language.
Iâll go so far as to say that the standing of certain individuals I had in my own mind was shattered when we were all going for the mayoralty in my two campaigns in 2010 and 2013. There certainly was, among some of my opponents, no correlation between knowledge and the position they already held in society. It didnât mean I disliked them. It just meant I wondered how they got as far as they did without getting found out.
Fortunately, the victor, whether you agreed with her policies or not, possessed real intelligence. The fact she may have political views at odds with yours is nothing to do with intelligence, but her own observations and beliefs. I can respect that (which is why I follow people on social media whose political views I disagree with).
In turn Iâm sure many of them disliked what I stood for, even if they liked me personally. Certainly it is tempting to conclude that some quarters in the media, appealing to the same anti-intellectualism that some of my rivals represented, didnât like a candidate asserting that we should increase our intellectual capital and pursue a knowledge economy. No hard feelings, mind. As an exercise, it served to confirm that, in my opinion, certain powers donât have peopleâs best interests at heart, and there is a distinct lack of professionalism (and, for that matter, diversity) in some industries. In other words, a mismatch between what one says one does, and what one actually does. Language as doublespeak.
So is it speaking English that makes us more careless? Maybe it is: as a lingua franca in some areas, merely speaking it might put a person up a few notches in othersâ estimation. Sandeep Deva Misra, in his blog post in 2013, believes thatâs the case, and that we shouldnât prejudge Anglophones so favourably if the quality of their thought isnât up to snuff.
Maybe thatâs what we need to do more of: look at the quality of thought, not the expression or make a judgement based on which language itâs come in. As English speakers, we enjoy a privilege. We can demand that others meet us on our terms and think poorly when someone speaks with an accent or confuses your and youâre. It gives us an immediate advantage because we have a command of the lingua franca of business and science. It gives us the impunity to write fictions in Wikipedia or make an argument sound appealing through sound bites, hoping to have made a quick getaway before weâre found out. Political debate has descended into style over substance for many, although this is nothing new. I was saying, although not blogging, things like this 20 years ago, and my students from 1999â2000 might remember my thoughts on Tony Blair’s 1997 campaign as being high on rhetoric and light on substance. Our willingness to accept things on face value without deeper analysis, lands us into trouble. We’re fooled by delivery and the authority that is attached with the English language.
Youâll next see this in action in a high-profile way when Facebook comes forth with more comment about Cambridge Analytica. I can almost promise you now that it wonât hold water.
You have to wonder if the online census this year has been intentionally bad so that the powers that be can call it a flop and use it as an excuse to delay online voting, thereby disenfranchising younger voters.
Itâs the Sunday before the census and I await my access code: none was delivered, and I have three addresses at which this could be received (two entries to one dwelling, and a PO box). If itâs not at any of these, then thatâs pretty poor. I have been giving them a chance on the expectation it would arrive, but now this is highly unlikely.
And when you go to the website, they claim my browserâs incompatible. I disagree, since Iâm within the parameters they state.
This screen shot was taken after I filled out a request for the access code yesterday. Statistics NZ tells me the code will now take a week to arrive, four days after census night. Frankly, thatâs not good enough.
While Iâve seen some TV commercials for the census, Iâve seen no online advertising for it, and nothing in social media. My other half has seen no TVCs for it.
Going up to the census people at the Newtown Fair today, I was handed a card with their telephone number and asked to call them tomorrow.
Youâd think theyâd have people there at the weekend when weâre thinking about these things. Letâs hope I remember tomorrow.
And I’m someone who cares about my civic duty here. What about all those who don’t? Are we going to see a record population drop?
I’m not alone in this.
Same friends feeling disenfranchised for not having a computer. I understand reasons for online census but I think organisation and comms around it leave somewhat to be desired.
So how many people on NZ Twitter have or haven't received their letter yet for Tuesday's Census?
— Sarah Hendrica Bickerton 👩🏻💻 (@sarahhbickerton) March 3, 2018
and there are a lot of people among her circles, myself included, who donât have the access code. Kat’s story is particularly interesting (edited for brevity):
Third call to Census NZ about getting a form for another dwelling on the property. This is specifically a question they talk about on the letter we got with our code, but operators are unable to issue extra codes. The request goes up to the supervisor.
When a field officer called around to give you a form, they sorted out issues like a second dwelling at the time, right there. They had authority to do so. They answered questions, and made sure you knew what you needed to do.
And I can't help but surmise that low socioeconomic communities are going to be the ones who: a) most likely won't have the time or inclination to fill in another bloody form for the government, let alone proactively pursue it b) need to be represented in the stats for funding
Online systems are robust and can be successful.
Itâs just that they need to be backed up by people with a will to make things succeed, not people who are so intent on making them fail.
I don’t know if Instagram does this on all phones, but when I make multi-photo posts, it often leaves behind a very interesting image. Sometimes, the result is very artistic, such as this one of a LotusâFord Cortina Mk II.
You can see the rear three-quarter shot just peer in through the centre. I’ve a few others on my Tumblr, but this is the best one. Sometimes technology accidentally makes decent art. I’m still claiming copyright given it’s derived directly from my work.
P.P.P.PS.: Lumino’s head office has taken this case very, very seriously, and has been following up on Ezidebit and Goody. I’m actually really impressedâenough to add the two words to the title. They get that I’ve never put my cellphone number on an any app in the past, and they, too, know that the timing of the scam calls is suspicious. I’ve had a promise that they’ll follow up.âJY
I signed up to the Lumino Dental Plan yesterday (Friday). Big mistake. Lesson worth repeating: listen to your gut.
Some days, the pleasant side of me kicks in and I give people the benefit of the doubt. I read the T&Cs while I was still there but it started getting unreasonable with my standing at the counter while they’re trying to deal with their other patients. ‘Don’t be such a wanker, Jack,’ I thought. ‘So their agreement wasn’t drafted by a professional lawyer. You’ve used Lumino before and the dentist last year was great, and this hygienist was excellent. Let the office manager’s sales’ technique win the day, it’s no big deal.’
Naturally, she really wanted me to sign and made it quite clear that that was the result she wanted.
But it was a big deal. I spent an hour last night writing the below to the companies involved. They gave five different emails so I contacted them all.
Ladies and Gentlemen:
After due consideration, I do not wish to enter into this Dental Plan, and exercise my right under the Consumer Guarantees Act to cancel it. I have been advised by Lumino the Dentists the Terrace that the cooling-off period for this sale is the standard five (working) days and I will be refunded in full.
I was asked by the practice this afternoon to email you with my reasons should I cancel. As all the above addresses have been given to me in one communication alone, I am taking the liberty of writing to you all.
First, I do not feel I had sufficient time to absorb the Ezidebit agreement today (Friday the 26th), especially on a tiny tablet screen, under what I felt was an expectation that I would sign before I departed.
If I recall correctly, the tablet app links to Luminoâs terms and conditions and these are different to the ones in the DLE brochure introducing the plan. I was not made aware of the DLE’s terms and conditions initially and was led to believe that the only ones were on the tablet.
As I advised Lumino while at the practice today, I had serious concerns about the Ezidebit agreementâs poor drafting and its reference to non-existent legislation. I was assured that should I sign, I would not suffer any loss because (a) that the cooling-off period for direct sales applied; and (b) that all Lumino customers who have cancelled to date have been refunded in full.
Among my concerns: I have never heard of the Contracts Privacy Act (neither has my partner, who has legal training), and there is confusion about whether I will be charged administration and transaction fees (Lumino says I wonât, Ezidebitâs T&Cs say I will). I also see there are SMS fees, although I was told at the practice that my cellphone would not be used and was led to believe that its request in the app was a formality. There is no specificity on any of these fees, other than for a failed payment. Generally, the Ezidebit agreement appears to be a copy-and-paste job, its constituent parts drafted by two lawyers who hated each other, and assembled by a third who hated them both.
Neither party has come forth with information about the handling of my private information.
Going to Ezidebitâs parent company, Global Payments, didn’t help, since the US firm’s website says there would be information on its cookie usage on its terms of use pageâbut there isnât. I never went further.
Now that I have had a chance to sit down and review the documentation in your email, I have to conclude that with two businesses telling me different thingsâand the American one not even sure of what it has on its own website, let alone what laws exist in New ZealandâI have no trust in this arrangement.
The principle might be sound enough but the execution leaves much to be desired.
I will be happy to meet the full cost of my hygienistâs session today once I am satisfied that the refund has taken place. I respectfully request that I be refunded in full as soon as practicable, including any fees that may or may not have applied. As no privacy policy was given, I must also request that all personal details held by Ezidebit (in New Zealand and Australia, since both companies are named in the agreement) or its parent Global Payments on me, including my name, email, Visa account information and cellphone number, be deleted immediately after the refund is made. I trust that any intermediaries or contractors who got them during today’s transactions will remove them as well.
Thank you,
Yours sincerely,
Jack Yan
A company called Goody was involved, and sent me the email asking for programme confirmation. I wrote to them separately. I’m not sure what their relationship is since the only T&Cs ever presented to me were for Lumino and Ezidebit. Goody could be an innocent third-party service provider, who also now has my personal information. I’ve asked them to delete it and take me off any programme of theirs, too. I had a peek through their terms and conditions and privacy policy, and both appeared up to snuff.
Tonight, Lumino sent me a survey form asking me what I thought of their service. Read on if you want to find out what happened earlier today (Iâll italicize it).
The care was excellent and I do not want that mixed up with the very harsh words I have for the Lumino Dental Plan. You have already been emailed about my choice to end my participation forthwith and to pay full price for my visit once I get confirmation that I have been refunded in full including any unspecified charges. In summary, US-owned Ezidebit whom you have partnered with looks like the dodgiest company around. I do not share my private cellphone number as a matter of practice but felt compelled to do so on your app on the assurance of your staffer that it would actually not be used. I put it into your tablet and within 24 hours I have a scam callerâyours is the only âunknownâ company that has this numberânot any more, it seems! The American company had no privacy policy and, as I pointed out at the time of signing, cited non-existent legislation in the T&Cs you gave me. You evidently have no idea how seriously I take my privacy and I feel disappointed, distressed and let down by this whole experience. I really should have listened to my gut and walked away at the practice, instead of spending an hour writing last nightâs email and even more time to update you on the scam calls I now get. I have heard of loyalty programmes but your Dental Plan is the first time I have come across a disloyalty programme.
I feel very let down, and it’s been a lesson for meâbut also for any business that decides to lend its good reputation to something highly questionable. It pays to do your due diligence, and that includes going through the customer sign-up process yourself to spot what holes there are. It’s become pretty obvious that this didn’t happen.
PS.: The scam caller on my cell came from +64 4 488-7021. Feel free to look it up for yourselves.âJY
P.PS.: The Lumino practice sent me an invoice for the hygienist’s session for another $153. No apology at all. Instead, ‘once this account is settled we will process your dental plan cancellation.’ Really?
Good morning:
I am deeply disappointed you have chosen to do it this way when I asked for the Plan to be cancelled first, as is my rightâand which is something you plainly stated I could do. I don’t even get an apology or explanation for all the shortcomings in the Plan or the inconvenience caused, which is indeed surprising, or some assurance that my personal details were not sold. Given the scam calls on both my cell and land lines since providing you with my number on your app, I am sadly forced to conclude that they were.
Let me clarify our respective positions under New Zealand law.
Here’s where I stand:
I have a right to cancel this Plan. You’ve said so and I know so. I’ve exercised this right as of Friday night.
You do not have a right to make the refund of the Plan conditional on my settling the account.
I have an obligation to settle your account independent of the Plan’s cancellation.
Here’s where you stand:
You’ve done dental work on me which you should rightly be paid for.
You’ve had a written offer from me to settle this account already.
You’re in an extremely strong position to make sure I settle the account without making settlement conditional on the Plan’s cancellation.
Your doing so violates New Zealand consumer law.
Unlike you, I can make this conditional on your cancelling the Plan, in part because I have no way of finding out whether you’ve taken my $299 or not.
It appears from your email that you already have.
Logically you could refund the difference between $299 and the invoice amount, which would be taking some responsibility for this mess.
I cannot see why I need to be out of pocket for $452 at any time. I am sure you can see how this is grossly unfair.
This seems like a delaying tactic to make sure the five days go by.
I now respectfully ask you cancel the Plan immediately and refund the difference, which seems the easiest solution.
Sincerely,
Jack
The matter is now before the support team in Auckland. Hopefully they can sort this without my contacting their CEO (which seems like the next logical step).âJY
P.P.PS.: The practice manager on the Terrace has received the above and responded far more professionally, asking me to leave it with her and she’ll sort it out. She assures me my details have not been soldânot that I doubted Lumino but I still have very massive doubts about Ezidebit and Global Payments. She’s also offered me 5 per cent off on future treatments out of goodwill, which is a very promising solution. Lumino’s support line in Auckland was also very friendly and logged it into their system.âJY
P.P.P.PS.: Lumino has remained on the case and tracked down Ezidebit’s privacy policy, which I had never seen till today. And I believe we have our smoking gun. Ezidebit’s claims that they have not heard of this happening before suddenly fall flat. In cl. 3.1:
When we share your information with third parties whom we partner with to provide our services (for example, providers of software or any other electronic applications which have been integrated with Ezidebit to enable us to process payments for users of that software or application), those third parties may use that personal information to provide marketing communications and targeted advertising to you.
In cl. 3.2:
We may disclose your personal information to our related companies or to third parties located outside of New Zealand, including:
⢠The United States;
⢠Australia;
⢠Philippines;
⢠The United Kingdom; and
⢠Hong Kong.
That latter clause explains the scam call on Monday, January 29 then, which was on my cell and asked for me by name. The caller had a Philippine accent and claimed she was calling from Hong Kong.âJY
Suzi Dawson’s 2016 post debunking a biased Guardian article on Julian Assange is quite an accomplishment. To quote her on Twitter, ‘The article I wrote debunking his crap was such toilet paper that I was able to disprove literally every single line of it, a never-before-achieved feat for me when debunking MSM smears. Check it out.’ Here is a link to her post.
I will quote one paragraph to whet your appetite, and you can read the rest of what I consider a reasoned piece at Contraspin. To date there have been no comments taking issue with what she wrote.
To the contrary, other than solidarity from close friends and family, these people usually end up universally loathed. In the cases of Jimmy Savile, Rolf Harris, Bill Cosby, these men were protected for decades by the very establishment that they served. It took decades for their victims to raise awareness of what happened to them yet once they finally managed to achieve mainstream awareness, their attackers became reviled, etched in history as the monsters they are. The very speed and ferocity with which the Swedish (and other) governments targeted and persecuted Assange speaks volumes. Were he an actual everyday common rapist it is more likely than not that the police would have taken little to no action. Were he a high society predator, it would have taken decades for the public to become aware of it. But because he is neither, and is in fact a target of Empire, he was smeared internationally by the entire worldâs media within 24 hours of the allegations and six years later is still fighting for the most basic acknowledgements of the facts â such as that he has still never been charged with any crime, which Ms Orr fails to mention even once in her entire piece.
It’s important to keep an open mind on what we are being toldâthere are many false narratives out there, and neither left- nor right-wing media come to the table with clean hands.
Prof Jane Kelsey, in her critique of the still-secret Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement on Trans-Pacific Partnership (formerly the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement [TPPA]) notes in The Spinoff:
The most crucial area of the TPPA that has not received enough attention is the novel chapter on electronic commerceâbasically, a set of rules that will cement the oligopoly of Big Tech for the indefinite future, allowing them to hold data offshore subject to the privacy and security laws of the country hosting the server, or not to disclose source codes, preventing effective scrutiny of anti-competitive or discriminatory practices. Other rules say offshore service providers donât need to have a presence inside the country, thus undermining tax, consumer protection and labour laws, and governments canât require locally established firms to use local content or services.
If this new government is as digitally illiterate as the previous one, then we are in some serious trouble.
I’m all for free trade but not at the expense of my own country’s interests, or at the expense of real competition, and the Green Party’s position (I assume in part operating out of caution due to the opaqueness of the negotiations) is understandable.
Protecting a partly corrupt oligopoly is dangerous territory in a century that will rely more heavily on digital commerce.
While there may be some valid IP reasons to protect source code, these need to be revealed in legal proceedings if it came to thatâand one hopes there are provisions for dispute settlement that can lift the veil. But we don’t really know just how revised those dispute settlement procedures are. Let’s hope that Labour’s earlier stated position on this will hold.
Google has already found itself in trouble for anticompetitive and discriminatory practices in Europe, and if observations over the last decade count for anything, it’s that they’ll stop at nothing to try it on. Are we giving them a free ride now?
Despite Prof Kelsey’s concerns, I can accept that parties need not have a presence within a nation or be compelled to use local content or services. But the level of tax avoidance exhibited by Google, Facebook, Apple et al is staggering, and one hopes that our new government won’t bend over quite as easily. (While I realize the US isn’t part of this agreement, remember that big firms have subsidiaries in signatory countries through which they operate, and earlier trade agreements have shown just how they have taken on governments.)
She claims that the technology minister, the Hon Clare Curran, has no information on the ecommerce chapter’s analysisâand if she doesn’t have it, then what are we signing up to?
However, Labour’s inability to be transparentâsomething they criticized the previous government onâis a weak point after a generally favourable start to 2018. The Leader of the Opposition is right to call the government out on this when his comment was sought: basically, they were tough on us when we were in government, so we hope they’ll live up to their own standards. Right now, it doesn’t look like it. I suspect Kelsey is now the National Party fan’s best friend after being vilified for years. Bit like when Nicky Hager (whom one very respected MP in the last Labour government called a right-wing conspiracy theorist) wrote Seeds of Distrust.
And the solutions that Kelsey proposes are so simple and elegant that it’s daft they weren’t followed, since they are consistent with the Labour brand. I know, trade agreements can stay confidential at this stage and this isn’t unprecedented. But that’s not what Labour said it wanted. At least these suggestions would have shown some consistency with Labour’s previous positions, and given some assurance that it’s in charge.
What should a Labour-led government have done differently? First, it should have commissioned the revised independent economic assessment and health impact analyses it called for in opposition. Second, it should have shown a political backbone, like the Canadian government that also inherited the deal. Canada played hardball and successful demanded side-letters to alter its obligations relating to investment and auto-parts. Not great, but something. New Zealand should have demanded similar side-letters excluding it from ISDS as a pre-requisite for continued participation. Third, it should have sought the suspension of the UPOV 1991 obligation, which has serious Treaty implications, and engaged with MÄori to strengthen the Treaty of Waitangi exception, as the Waitangi Tribunal advised. Fourth, it should have withdrawn its agreement to the secrecy pact.
I once joked that National and Labour were basically the same, plus or minus 10 per cent. On days like this, I wonder if I was right.
Weâve had years of Google and Facebook acting like arses, but itâs disappointing to see Twitter give us more and more causes for concern.
In 2017, we saw them change their terms and conditions so speaking power to truth is no longer a requirement. You canât help but think that the decision to accommodate the US president is part of that: there is a policy within Twitter that President Trump is immune to their terms and conditions, and can Tweet with impunity what you and I would get kicked off for doing. We also saw Twitter, which is scrambling to show the US government that it is doing something about alleged Russian interference, kick off a privately developed bot that helped identify fake accounts. Youâd think that if Twitter were sincere about identifying fake accounts, it would embrace such technology.
One of my regular blog readers, Karen Tolfree, very kindly linked me a report from Hannity (which another friend later informed me was first revealed on Breitbart) which showed Twitter staff caught on video admitting to shadow-banning either because they disagreed with the userâs politics (with an admission that Twitter is 90 per cent US Democrat-leaning) or because of US government pressure (when discussing Julian Assangeâs account).
What was the old saying? I might not always agree with your politics but I will always defend to the hilt your right to express your views.
Therefore, I mightnât be President Trumpâs biggest fan but those who support him, and do so within the same rules that Iâm governed by on Twitter (e.g. not resorting to hate speech or attacking any individual or group), must have the same right to free speech as I should.
I do not wish them to be silenced because many of them have good reasons for their beliefs, and if I donât see them in my feed then how will I understand them? I donât wish to live in a bubble (meanwhile, Facebook and Google want you to; Facebookâs âcrowdsourcingâ its ranking of media sources is going to make things far worseâhave a look at Duck Duck Go founder Gabriel Weinberg’s series of Tweets at the end of this post).
Because you never know if Twitterâs shadow-banning is going to go after you, since, like Facebookâs false malware accusations, they could be indiscriminate.
In fact, two New Zealanders were shadow-banned over the last week: one with stated left-leaning views (Paul Le Comte), another (Cate Owen) who hasnât put her political leanings into her bio, and who was shadow-banned for reasons unknown. Itâs not just conservatives these guys go after, and neither was told just which Tweet netted them this âpunishmentâ.
I think itâs generally agreed that we have passed peak Twitter just as we have passed peak Facebook, but as itâs one of the original, mid-2000s social media services I still use, Iâm disappointed that I canât feel as happy being on there as I once did. After all, our presence is effectively our endorsement, and do we really endorse this sort of censorship against people because of either their politics, governmental pressure or reasons unknown? Twitter paints itself as a place where we can speak freely, provided we do so within certain rules, and the dick moves over the last 12 months make me wonder if itâs heading in the same direction as Google (tax-avoiding, hacking, lying about advertising tracking, allegedly pressuring think-tanks to fire someone over their viewpoints, biasing results in its own favour) and Facebook (forced downloads using the excuse of malware detection, kicking off drag queens and kings, tracking people after they have opted out, potential database issues that kick people off for days, endless bots and general ineffectiveness in removing them, lying about user numbers). Twitter always had bots and trolls, but weâre seeing what goes on inside nowadays, and it ainât pretty.
In 2018, we know Twitter is not a place for free speech, where rules apply differently depending on who you are, and where the identification of bots is not a priority.
And even though weâve had some happy news already this year (e.g. the prospect of Baby Clarcinda in five monthsâ time), these influential websites, whose actions and policies do affect us all, are âdoing it all wrongâ.
To be (more) clear, promoting trustworthy news sources is a reasonable idea.
Relying solely on crowdsourcing to determine trust, though, or making trust scores individualized, are both poor implementations that will create more negative unintended consequences.
I get that companies don't want to editorialize, but there are other paths than inscrutable algorithms, such as creating or working with independent non-partisan bodies to make the hard editorial decisions based on transparent and obviously measurable criteria.
