I could just repeat my post from January 26. Let’s face it, Google is a notorious spammer, with a failing search engine, and an advertising business that’s a decent negligence lawsuit away from collapsing. It was 2011 when I showed everyone that your opt-out settings in Google Ads Preferences Manager were meaningless. Today, your email […]
Read More… from Your preferences mean nothing to Google or Microsoft
As if to prove my point about lies, Google spammed me right after my last post. In its footer: No, I didn’t. I logged into Google to see my settings. Sure enough: As I always say, when it comes to computers, I’m right, they’re wrong. I have a better memory. I […]
Read More… from Confused Google doesn’t understand email preferences
Kurt and I have very different brains, if you read this thread that I jumped in on. I am sure he is right on how things should work. Get me talking about spacing and spelling, and I’d be in the same boat. Or the use of the word billion. I have my ideas on all […]
Big thanks to Petra on Mastodon for this one. Don’t discount us non-techs. When we come to you, we’ve often done a lot of testing first before sounding the alarm. And often we are right. Just like I was right with Vox when I could only get a compose window on select days over three […]
Read More… from I can empathize with the 500-mile email problem
This was somewhat disappointing. This chap contacts me, seemingly wanting permission to repost our Instagram images. His personal info has been removed. Hello there, We have reviewed your page and we truly loved your work! We’d like to repost your pictures on our profile. Our account is [redacted] and we have over 200.000 […]
Read More… from Instagram scammers are next-level lazy (and greedy)
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 […]
Read More… from What I do when someone uploads my private information on to Facebook
Refreshingly, I’ve noticed that my more recent blog posts haven’t been about Big Tech as often. I haven’t changed my views: the ones I’ve stated earlier still stand, and Google and Facebook in particular continue to be a blight on democracy and even individual mental health. A lot of the posts were inspired by […]
Read More… from My first tech post in a while: how I use my social-computing time
A couple of years ago, friends in Wellington, who own a business—let’s call it X—were approached by a US company with the same name, though in a slightly different industry. They wanted my friends to give up their page name facebook.com/x to them, and suggested that they should be facebook.com/xnz. No suggestion of […]
After three messages I decided I would answer one of those Gmail users asking about advertorial. And from now on I’m just going to copy and paste this to anyone else asking, ‘Why won’t you answer me?’ Dear [redacted]: Sorry, this is why I haven’t answered you (and this is not because of you, but […]
Read More… from Dear Gmail user: your industry has worn me down
I’m not exactly proud of this, but last month I finished replying to all my emails from 2005. That year I was stuck in Auckland for an extra day due to the airport there being fogged in. I said to another traveller, ‘Well, I won’t catch up on emails now till the end of […]
Read More… from Finished replying to my 2005 and 2006 emails