Unpinning a collaborative Instagram post: it can’t be done when neither party pinned it

05.06.2025/11.40

A few days ago, Lucire’s Instagram account had a pinned post that we never pinned. It was a collaborative post from our friend Michael Nelson in Dubai which he posted in March. Above: Our Instagram page after Mike’s team attempted to edit the post, and we pinned our issue 51 cover to counteract the […]

What they can tell from a single photo

02.05.2025/23.08

Again via Ben Daubney’s blog, which I found yesterday, a site called They See Your Photos, which uses Google’s Vision API to infer information about you. If you feed in a photo, the site provides Google’s output, and it is eerie what they are capable of “seeing”. However, the single photo’s output is not accurate, […]

I’m no longer alone in calling for Big Tech to face bans

05.03.2025/09.45

I’ve been saying this for many years, certainly for at least five, but the most ready example I can find on my blog was from August 2024: we have seen repeatedly how dishonest Big Tech conduct, which is often left unchecked, festers into something appalling, whether it’s anticompetitive conduct or the genocide of Rohingya Muslims […]

It’s ﬁnally mainstream to report what Big Tech has been about for over a decade

28.02.2025/00.26

Now that the world is waking up to Big Tech and its shenanigans, there is less need for me to post about them. Finally, what was once very evident to me is becoming mainstream thought, from Big Tech’s kowtowing to the suppression of a free press. I posted because it was frustrating to see everyone […]

Everyone now sees the rot economy—and we’re beginning to understand what’s behind it

12.02.2025/01.23

Again, things I’ve been pointing out for over a decade—heck, even over two decades, if you consider early concerns I had over Yahoo!—are now mainstream thought. Ed Zitron’s latest newsletter begins: A great deal of what I write feels like narrating the end of the world—watching as the growth-at-all-costs, hyper-financialized Rot Economy seemingly tarnishes every […]

The public is waking up about Google

11.02.2025/09.25

Former journalism academic Dan Gillmor writes: Post by @dangillmor View on Mastodon People are waking up. Such warnings have been on this blog for over 15 years. The Facebook ones started a bit later when it became evident that they were a bug-filled privacy danger zone, then Twitter. Dan is right: ‘You never […]

Autocade World: the site of the book of the site

01.02.2025/08.34

When The Producers—the film with Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane—was released, Mel Brooks said it was the film of the musical of the film. Autocade World is the website of the book of the website. My intro on the site gives the raison d’être, but in a nutshell, the new site initially exists to […]

Another nonsense “SEO” word appears on the web

24.01.2025/21.44

I’ve noticed another nonsense word make its way on to the search engines: appkod. Similarly to how Semrush told users that jackyan was trending alongside Google SEO, there are weird web pages all over with SEO service appkod or similar combinations, such as Appkod SEO Agency and Instagram marketing Appkod. A Pakistani company has adopted […]

After warnings were ignored, we now arrive in the new tech mainstream

19.01.2025/21.18

If you look back at all the tech companies I’ve called out, deep down I did so as a warning. If they show this contempt for the user, then it’s symptomatic of greater problems. Everything from Google switching your ad preferences’ opt-outs back to opt-ins and the stonewalling when it came to deleted blogs, to […]

The world is waking up to what Meta has been for a long time

09.01.2025/09.12

I don’t need to say much now that the world is waking up. So what’s new? This was exactly where Facebook was heading in the 2010s. Appeasement depending on which way the wind is blowing. Principles? Look elsewhere. Zuckerberg’s only principle is safeguarding his wealth. I’ve said for years to simply shut it off. If […]