Why in 2017, joining Facebook is a bad thing

Reddit, uploaded by GameAlex2005 Holly Jahangiri shared this link with me on Twitter yesterday: Facebook is asking people to upload photos of themselves to prove they’re human.    Good luck with that, because most of the bot accounts do have profile photographs, so this won’t solve a thing.    Of the many bots and fakes […]

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YouTube under fire for child exploitation videos—with ‘three unpaid volunteers’ monitoring reports

The Murdoch Press has rightly kept its pressure up on Google, with a cover story in The Times, ‘Adverts fund paedophile habits’ on November 24 (the online version, behind a paywall, is here).    Say what you will about its proprietor, but Murdochs have been happy to go after the misdeeds of Google: the earlier […]

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Google is telling fibs again when it says it’s dealing with “fake news” sites: more proof

Above: Good news, Newsroom and The Spinoff are there in Google News.   Further to my blog post last night, I decided to look at Google News to see who had the latest on our PM, Jacinda Ardern. Feeding in her name, the above is the results’ page.    I had thought that I had […]

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The hunt for reliable news is harder today

Above: A reputable Las Vegas newspaper, the Las Vegas Review–Journal. I’m not going to weigh in on the debate surrounding the US Second Amendment today, but what I will say is whether we like their politicians or not, the victims in Las Vegas didn’t deserve their fates. My thoughts and prayers go to them and […]

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Welcome to Vivaldi

Earlier this week, I installed Vivaldi browser, and decided to make it my default after reading CEO Jon von Tetzchner’s blog post about the potentially corrupt practice of Google suspending his company’s Adwords campaign after he was critical of them.    I have resisted browsers made from Chromium because I was never sure how much […]

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What Facebook’s anti-malware malware does to your Windows 10 computer

When I said in January that Facebook’s and Kaspersky’s anti-malware malware (there’s no better term for it, though of course they will deny that it was malware) had it in for McAfee, what did I mean?    As some of you know, I fell for Facebook’s insistence that I download its malware if I wanted […]

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Your preferences mean nothing: Facebook still profiles you, even after you switch off interest-based ads

A few years ago, I discovered that Google was monitoring and gathering user preferences even after one had opted out. Google would initially put an opt-out cookie that went with your browser when you first opt out, which is exactly what every other ad network does—but, then, within 24 hours, it would replace it with […]

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Read the report: Deloitte actually doesn’t blame migrants for increased corruption

Deloitte has published a report on the increasing corruption in Australia and New Zealand, which Fairfax’s Stuff website reported on today.    Its opening paragraph: ‘An increase in bribery and corruption tarnishing New Zealand’s ethical image may be due to an influx of migrants from countries where such practices are normal.’    The problem: I’m […]

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FCC rules in favour of ’net neutrality (at least we think it has)

I’ve gone into the reasons I support ’net neutrality elsewhere, but it was nice to hear about this on the wireless: even though we still don’t know the specifics, as the FCC has kept this to itself for now. (We do know that Google has written a letter to the FCC, and that ‘an entire […]

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How many Facebook bots do you see in an evening? I count over 250

Last month, I Tweeted Facebook, asking them to raise the reporting limit for bots. Right now, you can report around 40 bot accounts before a warning box comes up asking you to slow down. If you do another 10, you are barred from reporting any more for 24 hours—even though you are trying to help […]

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