Facebook leaves up over 95 per cent of hate speech; ‘embarrassing to work here,’ says ex-staffer

16.12.2020/01.19

Buzzfeed’s article, on departing Facebook staff who write ‘badge posts’, wasn’t a surprise; what was a greater surprise was just how long it took for such news to surface. Badge posts are traditional farewell notes at Facebook, and not everyone has had rosy things to say. One wrote, ‘With so many internal forces propping […]

Wikipedia acts swiftly when criticized, bans an editor for life

05.10.2019/08.06

When I wrote this post in May 2018, ‘People are waking up to Wikipedia’s abuses’, even I didn’t expect that Wikipedia would act so harshly when it gets criticized on its own platform. One editor decided to create a page on Philip Cross, who (or which) received a great deal of attention that month, […]

Twitter’s shadow-banning: not just in the US, as Kiwis get caught up, too

21.01.2018/09.53

Anthony Quintano/Creative Commons We’ve had years of Google and Facebook acting like arses, but it’s 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 can’t help but think that the […]

Secret “Asian” man (with apologies to Tak Toyoshima)

11.10.2017/01.20

Matt Clark Above: Driving a silver Aston Martin. I’m citing the Official Secrets Act when I say I may or may not be on the tail of Auric Goldfinger. Oh dear, I’ve been outed. I’m a spy. Actually, Walter Matthau and I prefer ‘agent’. You can read between the lines in this New […]

Fifty editors at Wikipedia ban Daily Mail based on some anecdotes

12.02.2017/00.47

How right Kalev Leetaru is on Wikipedia’s decision to ban The Daily Mail as a source. This decision, he concludes, was made by a cabal of 50 editors based on anecdotes. I’ve stated before on this blog how Wikipedia is broken, the abusive attitude of one of its editors, and how even luminaries like […]

The big difference with the internet of the ’90s: it served the many, not the few

11.09.2016/14.24

Above: Facebook kept deleting Nick Ut’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph each time it was posted, even when Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten did so, preventing its editor-in-chief from responding. There’s a significant difference between the internet of the 1990s and that of today. As Facebook comes under fire for deleting the “napalm girl” photograph from the Vietnam […]

Time for a rewatch: Reza Aslan interviewed on CNN about Muslim violence

14.01.2015/05.00

Found on my wall today. While it’s over three months old, the responses from Prof Reza Aslan of the University of California Riverside address a lot of the comments that have surfaced post-Charlie Hebdo head-on—which shows that we continue to go round and round the same arguments and not making an awful lot of progress. […]

Users upset over YouTube–Google linking, and is Google showing greater bias in results?

12.01.2011/12.29

I found out a day after many netizens: Google is now forcing all YouTube account holders to merge their accounts with their Google ones. As part of my de-Googling, I won’t be following suit. Instead, I plan to stay logged out of YouTube: it makes very little difference to me. So I won’t […]

Winding down after a busy, post-campaign 24 hours

10.10.2010/10.16

At our campaign after-party: self, Karen King, and Chloe Oldﬁeld and Aaron Hape. It is perhaps no surprise that the last 24 hours saw more Tweets to me than any other period in my life, as the results from the local body elections came in. I was overwhelmed by the messages, which were very […]

Creative or reactive? Your choice

13.09.2010/21.10

The Fairfax Press has been very interesting in its coverage since the beginning of my mayoral campaign. A Miramar Wharf hotel–training centre development that I pushed for missed any quotes from myself, while today’s announcement of wiﬁ for the waterfront by the incumbent and the Fairfax Press itself again does the same. But, you […]