Computing in 2021: Gmail’s advertorial spammers, Facebook bots, and Twitter fatigue

I’m not entirely sure I need to block out the email addresses here since they’re likely to be burner Gmail accounts, but I’ll give these spammers the courtesy they don’t deserve.    As shown below, they’ve been coming for over a year; there’s a chance I may have even received them in 2019.     […]

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A refreshing piece on diversity in our mainstream media

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 – like the media, politics or corporate leadership – if you play by the rules. […]

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In the ‘I told you so’ department: Facebook purges left-wing, anti-war accounts

Further to my Lucire op–ed on January 8, and my blog post on January 11, I hinted that this could happen.    From the World Socialist Web Site: 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 […]

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Like communist dictatorships, Google and Facebook threaten Australia

You know the US tech giants have way too much power, unencumbered by their own government and their own country’s laws, when they think they can strong-arm another nation.    From Reuter: Alphabet Inc’s Google said on Friday it would block its search engine in Australia if the government proceeds with a new code that […]

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This was the natural outcome of greed, in the forms of monopoly power and sensationalist media

I did indeed write in the wake of January 6, and the lengthy op–ed appears in Lucire, quoting Emily Ratajkowski, Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden. I didn’t take any pleasure in what happened Stateside and Ratajkowski actually inspired the post after a Twitter contact of mine quoted her. This was after President Donald Trump was […]

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The US, where big business (and others) can lie with impunity

One thing about not posting to NewTumbl is I’ve nowhere convenient to put quotations I’ve found. Maybe they have to go here as well. Back when I started this blog in 2006—15 years ago, since it was in January—I did make some very short posts, so it’s not out of keeping. (I realize the timestamp […]

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

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 […]

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Looks like Twitter makes up your settings, too

Speaking of Twitter doing weird things, I checked out some of Lucire’s settings on there today, something I haven’t looked at for a long time.    I do not ever recall telling them I was in Malaysia—it’s not a country we’ve even had a correspondent in—and Estonian and Welsh were never marked as languages. I’m […]

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Confirmed: Twitter does unfollow people

Pixabay People have long suspected that Twitter “unfollows” without human intervention (I’ve heard the stories for over a decade), but I never had any first-hand proof. Like the Google Ads Preferences Manager (they don’t use apostrophes in Mountain View) situation in 2011, where I initially doubted myself, thinking maybe I hadn’t opted out when in […]

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More things that don’t work: Google knowledge panels, and typing in te reo Māori in Facebook

A guide to emojis for 2020. Just for clarification: 😷 = happy😷 = angry😷 = laughing😷 = sad#COVID19 #emoji — Jack Yan 甄爵恩 (@jackyan) September 5, 2020 At least Twitter works. Google, as usual, doesn’t.    I had a check to see how Lucire was performing in a Google search yesterday and noticed there was […]

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