Afterpay wants my account details (even though I don’t have an account) to investigate its own activity

19.10.2021/21.22

Usual story: go into the Facebook advertising preferences, spot organizations that I’ve never dealt with somehow possessing private information about me that they’ve uploaded to Facebook. One noticeable one was Afterpay, both its Australian office (no reply on Twitter) and the ‘Afterpay USA Business Manager’ (the US office did reply). @AfterpayUSA I don’t even […]

What I do when someone uploads my private information on to Facebook

14.10.2021/11.01

I can’t be the only person who does this. This is one of the few things that I do on Facebook. Removing off-Facebook activity is another. 1. Let me check my Facebook advertising preferences. Who has been uploading my private information to Facebook without my permission? Hmm, Ramp, @rampcard, that’s new. I’ve […]

Even if they don’t delete you, people are deactivating their Instagram accounts

11.10.2021/22.07

I probably should have included this in yesterday’s blog post. When Lucire first lost its Instagram account, I searched for Instagram deactivate on Twitter. Sure enough, there were others in the same boat. However, on subsequent searches, these were far more frequent: I’m not being selective here—indeed there was an earlier search that had […]

For once, the US media were on Facebook’s case (they’ve more cohones than their government)

/00.17

For once, you didn’t need me to point out the unethical happenings of Facebook, Inc. when the mainstream media actually cared. First we had the Murdoch Press run ‘The Facebook Files’ in The Wall Street Journal, which I heard about from the incomparable and insightful Bob Hoffman on the 26th ult. The WSJ begins: […]

Switching Lucire’s home page over to the new template

07.10.2021/09.15

Lucire’s online edition home page: out with the old (top), in with the new (above). I switched over Lucire’s home page to the new template today. I’m going to miss the old one, since it had the effect of a bled page, something that’s de rigueur for a fashion magazine. As outlined in […]

After eight years, a new template for Lucire’s online edition

04.10.2021/09.56

Those were two pretty intensive days but Lucire’s web edition now has a new template. Before you head over there excitedly expecting all change, it only exists on two pages so far, and they are of the same article but in different languages. The look itself is not that different, either: we wanted […]

Lucire’s Instagram account is gone, for no reason

29.09.2021/20.46

Lucire’s Instagram is toast (hopefully temporarily, but you never know), since they unilaterally allege without evidence that there was unusual activity. This is utter shite, but it’s just another day in Facebookland where actual spam is tolerated, and legitimate activity is penalized. I’ve sent through the information they requested with a review promised in […]

Contextual targeting worked, so why abandon it?

27.09.2021/08.49

Didn’t I already say this? Contextual targeting worked for so long on the web, although for some time I’ve noticed ads not displaying on sites where I’ve blocked trackers or had third-party cookies turned off. That means there are ad networks that would rather do their clients, publishers and themselves out of income […]

Spacing in French: figuring out how to punctuate professionally

22.09.2021/13.35

With the French edition of Lucire KSA now out, we’ve been hard at work on the second issue. The first was typeset by our colleagues in Cairo (with the copy subbed by me), but this time it falls on us, and I had to do a lot of research on French composition. There are […]

Have you driven a Ford … lately? Probably not

13.09.2021/12.09

Ford’s Brazilian line-up, 2021. Once upon a time, there were locally developed Corcels and Mavericks; even the EcoSport was a Brazilian development. Today, it’s Mustang, a couple of trucks, and a rebadged Chinese crossover. We heard a lot about the demise of Holden as GM retreats from continents at a time, seemingly in a […]