This is a pretty typical story: find fault with Big Tech, try to alert the appropriate people in the firm, get fired. Julia Carrie Wongâs excellent article for The Guardian shows a data scientist, Sophie Zhang, find blatant attempts by governments to abuse Facebookâs platform, misleading their own people, in multiple countries. Of course Facebook denies it, but once again itâs backed up by a lot of evidence from Zhang, and we know Facebook lies. Endlessly.
Facebook claims it has taken down over â100 networks of coordinated inauthentic behavior,â but I repeat again: if a regular Joe like me can find thousands of bots really easily, and report some with Facebook doing next to nothing about them, then 100 networks is an incredibly tiny number in a sea of hundreds of millions of users. Indeed, 100 networks is tiny considering Facebook itself has claimed to have taken down milliards of bots.
And people like me and Holly Jahangiri, who found a massive number of bots that followed the Russian misinformation techniques, have been identifying these since 2014, if not before.
Zhang reveals how likes from pages are inflating various postsâforget the bots Iâve been talking about, people have manufactured full pages on the site.
She uncovered one in Honduras, and then:
The next day, she filed an escalation within Facebookâs task management system to alert the threat intelligence team to a network of fake accounts supporting a political leader in Albania. In August [2019], she discovered and filed escalations for suspicious networks in Azerbaijan, Mexico, Argentina and Italy. Throughout the autumn and winter she added networks in the Philippines, Afghanistan, South Korea, Bolivia, Ecuador, Iraq, Tunisia, Turkey, Taiwan, Paraguay, El Salvador, India, the Dominican Republic, Indonesia, Ukraine, Poland and Mongolia.
Facebook was inconsistent with what it did, and its own self-interest interfered with it taking action. In other words, Facebook is harmful to democracy, and not just in the US which has received most of the occidental news coverage. On Azerbaijan, Zhang wrote in a memo:
Although we conclusively tied this network to elements of the government in early February, and have compiled extensive evidence of its violating nature, the effective decision was made not to prioritize it, effectively turning a blind eye.
She was ultimately fired for her trouble, Facebook saying she wasnât doing the job she had been hired for.
So if you are going to work for Big Tech, leave your conscience at the door. That blood on your hands, just ignore it. Redâs such a fetching colour when itâs not on a balance sheet.
Little Tech can be troublesome, too. Last year, Meizu updated its Music app after a few years of letting it languish (a familiar theme with this firm), and it was a real lemon. It wouldnât pick up anything on my SD card, at the location the old Music app itself saved the files. When I could still access the Meizu (English-language) forum, I managed to post a comment about it. Only today did I realize someone had responded, with the same issue.
I can read enough Chinese to get the phone to do a search for local music files, and the only things it could pick up are whatâs on the phone RAM itself, not the card. Thereâs no way to point to custom locations such as a card (even though there is a custom search, but it applies to the phone only).
Above: Meizu Music will only find music on the phone’s RAMâin this case sound files that come with the dynamic wallpaper and a couple of meeting recordings I made.
Eventually I restored the old app through the settings, and all was well. It would occasionally forget the album cover art and Iâd have to relink it (who says computers remember things?), but, by and large, Music 8.0.10 did what was expected of it.
Until this last week. The phone insisted on upgrading to 8.2.12, another half-baked version that could never locate any SD card music.
Sure I could just move the entire directory of 1,229 songs to the phone, but I wondered why I should.
Restoring the app would work only for a few hours (during which I would try to relink the album cover art, ultimately to no avail). Blocking the new version the app store did nothing; blocking the entire app from updating did nothing. Blocking network access to the Music app did nothing. Essentially, the phone had a mind of its own. If anyone tells you that computing devices follow human instructions, slap them.
Above: I asked the app store to ignore all updates for Meizu Music. The phone will ignore this and do what it wants, downloading the update and installing it without any human intervention.
I had a couple of options. The first was to make Migu Music the defaultâand I had used that for a while before I discovered I could restore the Music app. Itâs passable, and it does everything it should, though I missed the cover art.
The other was to find a way to make Music 8.2.12 work.
There is one way. Play every one of the 1,229 songs one by one to have Music recognize their existence.
Using ES File Explorer, you head to the SD card, and click on each song. It asks which app youâd like to open it. Choose Music. Repeat 1,228 times.
Above: I finally got there after doing something 1,229 times. As a non-tech person I know of no way to automate this easily. I can think of a few but developing the script is beyond my knowledge.
Whoever said computing devices would save you time is having you on. They may have once, but there are so many systems where things are far more complicated in 2021 than they were in 2011.
You may be asking: doesnât ES let you select multiple files, even folders? Of course it does, but when you then ask it to play them, it ignores the fact youâve chosen Music and plays them in its own music player.
And even after youâve shown Music that there are files in an SD card directory, it wonât pick up its existence.
Itâs at odds with Meizuâs Video app, which, even after many updates, will find files anywhere on your phone.
For a music player with the same version (8) itâs vastly different, and, indeed, inferior to what has come before.
Howâs the player? Well, it connects to the car, which is where I use it. But so many features which made it appealing before are gone. Editing a songâs information is gone. Half the album cover art is unlinked (including albums legitimately downloaded through the old Meizu music service), and thereâs no way of relinking it. European accented characters are mistaken for the old Big 5 Chinese character set.
The only plus side is that some songs that I had downloaded years ago with their titles in Big 5, as opposed to Unicode, now display correctly. That accounts for a few songs (fewer than 10) of the 1,229.
I know Meizu will do nowt, as its customer service continues to plummet. I may still file something on its Chinese BBS (the western one is inaccessible and, from what I can tell, no longer maintained by anyone from their staff), but itâs highly unlikely Iâll be brand-loyal. It’s yet another example of a newer program being far, far worse, by any objective measure, than its predecessor, giving credence to the theory that some software developers are clueless, have no idea how their apps work, have no idea how people use their apps, or are downright incompetent. It’s a shame, as Meizu’s other default and system apps are generally good.
In the future, Iâm sure someone else in China will be happy to sell me a non-Google phone when it’s time to replace this one.
Here are April 2021âs images. I append to this gallery through the month.
Sources
Tania Dawson promotes SomĂšrfield Hair Care, sourced from Instagram.
Austrian model Katharina Mazepa for Dreamstate Muse magazine, shared on her Instagram. This was an image that was removed from a PG blog at NewTumbl last yearâapparently this was considered ‘nudity’ and rated M.
AMC promotes the Gremlin, the US’s first subcompact car. More on the Gremlin at Autocade; 1970 advertisement via Twitter. Volkswagen 1302S photographed in June 2018, one of the images Iâve submitted to Unsplash for downloading. I did have the owner’s permission to shoot his car.
St Gerard’s Church and Monastery atop Mt Victoria in Wellington, New Zealand, photographed by me and also submitted to Unsplash.
Facebook group bots: someone else was so used to seeing bot activity on Facebook, they made a meme about it.
Holden Commodore Evoke Ute, an example of ‘base model brilliance’. More at Autocade. Morris Marina ad via the Car Factoids on Twitter. Innocenti Mini 90 and 120 via the Car Factoids on Twitter.
The aerial shot of Rongotai in 1943 is from the Air New Zealand collection. This is a scan of a photostat Dad made for me in the 1980s. The piece of paper was getting a bit old so I thought it was time to make it digital-only. The â1929â marks the site of the original Rongotai Aerodrome, I believe.
Instafraud, from Bob Hoffman’s The Ad Contrarian newsletter.
Alisia Ludwig, from her Instagram, photographer unnamed. Fiat X1/9 brochure, from the Car Factoids on Twitter. More on the Peugeot 508 (R23) at Autocade.
Model Skyler Simpson at Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, Tampa, photographer unknown, via Instagram.
Whichever side you are on with Facebook imposing a ban on Australians sharing news content, this says it all about the level of intelligence over at Menlo Park.
In Australia, Facebook has not only de-platformed legitimate governmental bodies and non-profits, it has de-platformed itself.
Maybe taxing these companies would have been easier, and the proposed legislation isn’t perfect, but I think most people see through Facebook’s rather pathetic tactics.
It’s crying foul, saying it would have invested in local media in Australia, but won’t any more. But since Facebook lies about everything, I’ve no reason to believe they ever would have helped media organizations anywhere.
And notice how quickly it was able to shut off pages, and remove an entire country’s ability to share newsâyet it still struggles with removing fake content about COVID-19, extremist content and groups, bots, videos of massacres, and incitement of genocide and insurrection. It has struggled for years.
We all know that Facebook can do as it wishes with a singular eye on its bottom line. It doesn’t want to pay Australian publishers, so it quickly acts to shut off what Australians can do. But fake content and all the restâthat makes them money, so it doesn’t act at all, other than issuing some empty PR statements.
We all see through it, and this is probably the best thing it could have done. If people spend less time on its stress-inducing platforms, they will be healthier. And returning Facebook to what it was around 2008 when we shared what we were doing, not what the newsmedia were reporting, is really a plus.
It’s a splendid own goal that benefits Australians, who will ingeniously find solutions pretty quickly, whether it’s telling their friends about articles via email (which is what I used to do pre-social media), finding alternative services, or, not that I advocate this, resorting to outright piracy by pasting the entire article as a Facebook status update. No news in your feed? There are services for that, like going straight to the sources, or using a news aggregator (if you don’t like Google News, the Murdoch Press actually has one in beta, called Knewz. Who would have guessed that the only organization that stepped up to my half-decade-old demand for a Google News rival would be Murdochs?).
I doubt New Zealand will have the courage to follow suit, even though last year I wrote to the Minister of Communications to ask him to consider it.
It brings me very little pleasure to do these calculations. After reading Umair Haqueâs January 24 piece on the UKâs poor response to COVID-19âat the time the country had, by his reckoning, the highest death toll per capita in the worldâI decided to feed in the numbers again, as of 9 a.m. GMT today. Here are the percentages of positive cases out of total tests done, based on the official figures. I know itâs not scientific, but it gives me a rough idea of whoâs doing worse and whoâs doing better, relative to the last set (December 7, 2020), and, I hate to say it, the slap-dash response by some countries is prolonging our pain as a planet.
Brazil 34·50% â
Sweden 10·66% â
USA 8·42% â
Spain 8·27% â
Italy 7·51% â
France 7·08% â
Germany 5·62% â
India 5·27% â
UK 4·90% â
Russia 3·82% â
KSA 2·88% â
South Korea 1·36% â
Singapore 0·88% â
Taiwan 0·56% â
Australia 0·21% â
Hong Kong 0·152% â
New Zealand 0·146% â
He also notes that the UK was going to delay people getting their second vaccination shots. I hope the country has since changed its tune, but looking at the likes of Johnson and Hancock, who helped to gift the world the British mutation, I doubt they have the nous. Even my fifth form science will tell me this (original emphases):
Because science says so. Animal models already tell us that if the second dose isnât had within about a month, the immune cascade vaccines trigger fails to happen. Immunity doesnât result. Antibodies arenât developed ⊠Whatâs the upshot likely to be for Britain? The entire countryâs vaccination program is likely to fail. There are going to be a whole lot of people who get one dose, but not the second in time, and most of those people will not develop immunity. Do you know what happens when you cross a halfway vaccinated population with a fast evolving virus? Thatâs right, vaccine resistance. Britain already made itself a perfect petri dish for new strains of Covid â but what Britainâs doing right now is making it the perfect petri dish for deadlier, more infectious, and much, much more vaccine resistant strains of the virus.
I have dear friends there, at least one who is immuno-compromised, and this is, to put it bluntly, a shitshow. I’m glad their daily infection numbers have now fallen under 10,000, but all this needn’t have happened.
All galleries can be seen through the ‘Gallery’ link in the header, or click here (especially if you’re on a mobile device). I append to this entry through the month.
Two fantastic items in my Tweetstream today, the first from journalist Jehan Casinader, a New Zealander of Sri Lankan heritage, in Stuff.
Some highlights:
As an ethnic person, you can only enter (and stay in) a predominantly white space â like the media, politics or corporate leadership â if you play by the rules. And really, thereâs only one rule: blend in. Youâre expected to assimilate into the dominant way of thinking, acting and being âŠ
I sound like you. I make myself relatable to you. I communicate in a way that makes sense to you. I donât threaten you. I donât make you uncomfortable. And I keep my most controversial opinions to myself.
And:
Kiwis love stories about ethnic people who achieve highly: winning university scholarships, trying to cure diseases, inventing new technology or entering the political arena. These people are lauded for generating economic and social value for the country âŠ
We do not hear stories about ethnic people who work in thankless, low-skilled jobs â the refugees and migrants who stock our supermarket shelves, drive our taxis, pick our fruit, milk our cows, fill our petrol tanks, staff our hospitals and care for our elderly in rest homes.
Jehan says that now he is in a position of influence, heâs prepared to bring his Sri Lankan identity to the places he gets to visit, and hopes that everyone in Aotearoa is given respect ânot because of their ability to assimilateâ.
He was born here to new immigrants who had fled Sri Lanka, and I think there is a slight difference to those of us who came as children. Chief among this, at least for me, was my resistance to assimilation. Sure I enjoyed some of the same things other kids my age did: the Kentucky Fried Chicken rugby book, episodes of CHiPs, and playing tag, but because of various circumstances, as well as parents who calmly explained to me the importance of retaining spoken Cantonese at home, I constantly wore my Chineseness. I hadnât chosen to leave my birthplaceâthis was the decision of my parentsâso I hung on to whatever I could that connected me back to it.
I could contrast this to other Chinese New Zealanders I went to school with, many of whom had lost their native language because their parents had encouraged assimilation to get ahead. I canât fault themâmany of them are my dearest friendsâbut I was exposed to what Jehan wrote about from a young age.
It saddened me a lot because here were people who looked like me who I couldnât speak to in my mother tongue, and the only other student of Chinese extraction in my primary class who did speak her native language spoke Mandarinâwhich to many of my generation, certainly to those who did so little schooling before we left, find unintelligible.
At St Markâs, I had no issue. This was a school that celebrated differences, and scholastic achievement. (I am happy to say that sports and cultural activity are very much on the cards these days, too.) But after that, at one college, I observed what Jehan said: the Chinese New Zealanders who didnât rock the boat were safe buddies to have; those who were tall poppies were the target of the weak-minded, the future failures of our society. You just have to rise above it, and, if anything, it made me double-down on my characterâso much so that when I was awarded a half-scholarship to Scots, I found myself in familiar surroundings again, where differences were championed.
But you do indeed have to play the game. Want your company recognized? Then get yourself into the media. Issue releases just like the firms that were sending them to you as a member of the media. Donât bring your Chineseness into that, because you wonât get coverage. Jack Yan & Associates, and Lucire for that matter, always had a very occidental outlook, with my work taking me mostly to the US and Europe, with India only coming in at the end of the 2000sâbut then we were bound by the lingua franca of the old colonial power.
Despite my insistence on my own reo at home, and chatting every day to my Dad, I played the game that Jehan did when it came to work. I didnât as much when I ran for mayor, admittedlyâI didnât want voters to get a single-sided politician, but one who was his authentic selfâbut that also might explain why Stuffâs predecessor, which was at that stage owned by a foreign company, gave me next to no coverage the first time out. They werenât prepared to back someone who didnât fit their reader profile. The second time out, it still remained shockingly biased. Ironically the same publishing group would give me reasonably good coverage in Australia when I wasnât doing politics. Thatâs the price to pay for authenticity sometimes.
Jehan finishes his piece on a positive note and I feel he is right to. We still have issues as a nation, no doubt, but I think we embrace our differences more than we used to. There have been many instances where I have seen all New Zealanders rise up to condemn racism, regardless of their political bents. (What is interesting was I do recall one National MP still in denial, residing in fantasy-land, when I recalled a racist incidentâand this was after March 15, 2019!) People from all walks of life donated to my fund-raising when a friendâs car had a swastika painted on it. We have a Race Relationsâ Commissioner who bridges so many cultures effectivelyâa New Zealander of Taishanese extraction who speaks te reo MÄori and Englishâwho is visible, and has earned his mana among so many here. The fact that Jehanâs piece was even published, whereas in 2013 it would have been anathema to the local arm of Fairfax, is further reason to give me hope.
The second item? Have a watch of this. It’s largely in accord with my earlier post.
On Friday, Facebook carried out a purge of left-wing, antiwar and progressive pages and accounts, including leading members of the Socialist Equality Party. Facebook gave no explanation why the accounts were disabled or even a public acknowledgement that the deletions had occurred.
At least a half dozen leading members of the Socialist Equality Party had their Facebook accounts permanently disabled. This included the public account of Genevieve Leigh, the national secretary of the International Youth and Students for Social Equality, and the personal account of Niles Niemuth, the US managing editor of the World Socialist Web Site. In 2016, Niemuth was the Socialist Equality Partyâs candidate for US Vice President.
Seen it happen before, and weâll see it again. Given Facebookâs managementâs right-wing leanings, this really should come as no surprise. Doing it on a Friday also ensures less coverage by the media.
I just wonder if the leftists who celebrated the ban of former US president Donald Trump will now be claiming, âItâs a private company, they can host whom they like,â and âThe First Amendment doesnât guarantee that these websites should provide you with a platform.â
I have never trusted Facebook with my personal information and made sure I kept copies of everything. Itâs precisely because it is a private company that acts unilaterally and above the law that one never should trust them. We have had so many examples for over a decade.
My exact words on the 8th were: âLeftists (and a good many on the right) might be delighted at the actions taken by US Big Tech, but would one be as cheerful if a Democratic president or a leftist movement were silenced?â
As I have said for a long time, the left and right have common enemies, and here is a shining example.
You know the US tech giants have way too much power, unencumbered by their own government and their own countryâs laws, when they think they can strong-arm another nation. From Reuter:
Alphabet Incâs Google said on Friday it would block its search engine in Australia if the government proceeds with a new code that would force it and Facebook Inc to pay media companies for the right to use their content.
Fine, then piss off. If Australia wants to enact laws that you canât operate with, because youâre used to getting your own way and donât like sharing the US$40,000 million youâve made each year off the backs of othersâ hard work, then just go. Iâve always said people would find alternatives to Google services in less than 24 hours, and while I appreciate its index is larger and it handles search terms well, the spying and the monopolistic tactics are not a worthwhile trade-off.
I know Google supporters are saying that the Australian policy favours the Murdoch Press, and I agree that the bar that the ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) has set for what qualifies as a media business (revenues of over A$150,000 per annum) is too high. So it isnât perfect.
The fact Google has made a deal in France suggests it is possible, when the giant doesnât whine so damned much.
Plus, Google and Facebook have been dangerous to democracy, and should have done more for years to address these issues. Theyâve allowed a power imbalance for the sake of their own profits, so paying for newsâeffectively a licensing payment that the rest of us would have to fork outâat least puts a value on it, given how it benefits the two sites. No search? Fine, letâs have more ethical actors reap the rewards of fairer, âunbubbledâ searches, because at least there would be a societal benefit from it, and since they arenât cashing in on the mediaâs work, Iâm happy for them to get a free licence to republish. Right now I donât believe the likes of Duck Duck Go are dominant enough (far from it) to raise the attention of Australian regulators.
Facebookâs reaction has been similar: they would block Australians from sharing links to news. Again, not a bad idea; maybe people will stop using a platform used to incite hate and violence to get their bubbled news items. Facebook, please go ahead and carry out your threat. If it cuts down on people using your siteâor, indeed, returns them to using it for the original purpose most of us signed up for, which was to keep in touch with friendsâthen we all win. (Not that Iâd be back for anything but the limited set of activities I do today. Zuckâs rich enough.)
A statement provided to me and other members of the media from the Open Markets Instituteâs executive director Barry Lynn reads:
Today Google and Facebook proved in dramatic fashion that they pose existential threats to the worldâs democracies. The two corporations are exploiting their monopoly control over essential communications to extort, bully, and cow a free people. In doing so, Google and Facebook are acting similarly to China, which in recent months has used trade embargoes to punish Australians for standing up for democratic values and open fact-based debate. These autocratic actions show why Americans across the political spectrum must work together to break the power that Google, Facebook, and Amazon wield over our news and communications, and over our political debate. They show why citizens of all democracies must work together to build a communications infrastructure safe for all democracies in the 21st Century.
This is a comment (with my reply, in reverse chronology) from a NewTumbl user, Thewonderfulo, who often posts about the siteâs rating system. Iâve no idea if itâs official, but it certainly passes itself off as authoritative.
I usually find myself agreeing with them but hereâs a prime example where I donâtâbecause, first, I canât see anything in the NewTumbl rules that confirms this (excepting one sentence below which Iâll get on to); secondly, NewTumbl has told me of some of their positions personally and I feel theyâve confirmed my position; and thirdly, if bare behinds can be seen in PG-13 films (including in their country), then a single ‘buttcheek’ is even less offensive and couldnât possibly be M, which is where NewTumbl classifies nudity.
There is one sentence under the O category (âOfficeâ, or safe for work): âImages that would be considered sultry or provocative qualify as O provided the people in the photo have both their tops and bottoms covered â not just hidden from view, but actually wearing clothes.â Weâd then have to argue about how much âcoverageâ there is, and here Iâd fall back on being alive for nearly five decades and having kept my eyes open about popular culture. Swimwear, for instance, provides acceptable coverage which wouldnât offend most of us in the occident. From memory thatâs the level of skin the post in question was dealing with.
Itâs exactly as I said in my last post on NewTumbl. I love the concept, and the people who run the site, but the moderators are in some sort of Handmaidâs Tale Gilead. In fact, Iâd venture to say that Tumblr wouldnât consider a buttock to be offensive enough for removal. Given NewTumblâs history, as a Tumblr alternative that would be more tolerant, I believe that the moderators really donât understand the whole picture, and where the lines should be drawn.
To think, after chatting directly to NewTumbl I was feeling a bit more chipper about the site, only to have a one-sentence comment and zero willingness to engage by a user who is, I fear, typical of the âstandardsâ that are actually being applied by the overenthused American puritans.
Incidentally, speaking of Americans, the sort of divisive talk that they are infamous for is all too present. Have a look at the thread from my earlier post. Frankly, if they have a problem with a buttock on a woman who is actually wearing clothes, while this sort of mudslinging is fine on a family-friendly post, then I wonât be in a hurry to return. Sorry.
