LLMs and Google could destroy the internet

15.04.2024/02.54

Leigh Harrison sent me this blog post by Evan Boehs, which reflects my earlier ones about the web being rendered useless by Google et al. I never intended this blog to be about tech, but there’s so much to chart, and so much dishonesty to get on the record, lest someone else finds themselves in […]

A decade after Google, Meta dishes out fake cybersecurity warnings

07.04.2024/11.30

There’s nothing original with Big Tech It shouldn’t matter what Little Green Footballs’ politics are, as long as its blogger, Charles Foster Johnson, isn’t advocating anything hateful, and from what I can see of his current stance, he doesn’t. However, he’s found his blog links are being cancelled on Facebook. Links to posts going […]

Is Google hiding content critical of itself—while losing the spam battle?

22.02.2024/00.51

For a while I enjoyed getting some of the hits from the unwary searching for my name in association with the misinformation that Semrush allegedly generated. After all, it’s my name, and I should enjoy the hits for Google SEO jackyan in order to set the record straight, rather than have the unscrupulous among SEO […]

The IBM Selectric version of Univers revived

12.03.2023/02.12

This is one of the more fascinating type design stories I’ve come across in ages. Jens Kutilek has revived a very unlikely typeface: the IBM Selectric version of Univers in 11 pt. A lot of us will have seen things set on a Selectric in the 1970s, especially in New Zealand. I’ve even […]

You can’t even mention Mastodon in Twitter private messaging

17.12.2022/11.53

It was pretty unsurprising to see Mastodon links blocked on Twitter. If you consider that its owner is a petulant manchild, then everything makes sense. But I was surprised that this censorship extended to private messages. This from Tweetdeck as I advised a friend: Note the links aren’t even live—they’re just text mentions. […]

How to end social media censorship

16.04.2022/10.28

Kristina Flour/Unsplash This Twitter thread by Yishan Wong is one of the most interesting I’ve come across. Not because it’s about Elon Musk (who he begins with), but because it’s about the history of the web, censorship, and the reality of running a social platform. Here are some highlights (emphases in the original): There […]

A refreshing piece on diversity in our mainstream media

31.01.2021/10.58

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. […]

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

23.01.2021/10.44

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 […]

NewTumbl takes things seriously

05.01.2021/08.42

I have to say I’m impressed with NewTumbl as they responded to my Tweets about potential censorship and post moderation. I think they will allow me to share a few points. First, they took me seriously. The fact they even bothered to look into it is well beyond what Yahoo, Amazon, Facebook and […]

Is NewTumbl hiding posts critical of it?

16.12.2020/08.43

Postscript: Alex, who maintains three spaces on NewTumbl, can still see my “missing” five posts. In addition, NewTumbl has responded and it’s believed there was a bug. More on that here. This is interesting: talking to Bii on Twitter, who is also a NewTumbl user, I discovered that he can’t see my last five posts […]