I alluded to this earlier this year when we redid JY&A’s links’ directory, but Joan Westenberg confirms it with some real stats. Once upon a time, the web seemed limitless, but now ‘we’re trapped in digital zoos built by tech giants. Google. Facebook. Amazon. Apple. Microsoft. They’ve carved up the web into their private empires, […]
Read More… from How to deal with the shrinking, independent, human web
I’m proud to say I had a small part to play in Pīwari te Kaitiaki, which took out a bronze in the Social Good category at the Designers’ Institute of New Zealand’s Best Design Awards. My role was helping realize the translated version in te reo Māori, and it was an absolute joy to work […]
We know Meta’s not on the side of justice or democracy, as it shows over and over again, and OnlyKlans’ fascist leanings are obvious. Google pretends that it’s all about the algorithms when we know it’s not: for years it would censor anything critical of itself when I posted to my old Google Plus account. […]
Read More… from If it’s important, you can depend on Google to act as censor
How very interesting to see that the disinformation posts about me have stopped going up since I called out Semrush on their own subreddit. For four days I’ve not found any new ones on Google. The timing tells me that Semrush can, contrary to its response, adjust keywords, especially after learning the sheer hell their […]
Read More… from Forgetting humanity: the desperation of tech
Now isn’t that interesting? After posting about Semrush on their Reddit, where their error is laid bare for all to see, I have now had a blissful 48 hours where there were no new disinformation posts about yours truly pop up on Google searches. So much for Semrush claiming that it could not remove a […]
Read More… from Forty-eight hours without new disinformation—dare we hope for seventy-two?
I’m surprised that people are surprised that this is where Facebook is going. In the words of my friend Richard MacManus, in reference to this interview with Mark Zuckerberg in The Verge: ‘Mark Zuckerberg basically just confirmed that your feeds will soon be full of AI-generated content. Another reason the fediverse needs to exist: so […]
Read More… from “AI”? Facebook’s bot city has already been around for a decade
For anyone who has followed my battles with bot-written and bot-based junk this year, this should come as no surprise: The UK riots were fuelled by the same kind of website, with the same raison d’être. This one was in Pakistan, where, sadly, some of the disinformation sites about me have come from. […]
This is the natural consequence of all the misinformation that Semrush encouraged its users to post through the crap generated by its Keyword Magic Tool: people attacking me on Reddit. And who can blame them? It could well look like I was behind this spam campaign, instead of being the victim. The deleted comment […]
Read More… from The logical consequence of Semrush and its users’ misinformation: personal attacks
There is a certain satisfaction in reading statuses like this: But at the same time it confirms what I said years ago about Google My Business and its ilk. There are no safeguards for piling. Thanks to Google’s bugs, I believe my business has a listing but it’s been nicely messed up so […]
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 […]
Read More… from A decade after Google, Meta dishes out fake cybersecurity warnings