I probably should have included this in yesterday’s blog post. When Lucire first lost its Instagram account, I searched for Instagram deactivate on Twitter. Sure enough, there were others in the same boat. However, on subsequent searches, these were far more frequent: I’m not being selective here—indeed there was an earlier search that had […]
Read More… from Even if they don’t delete you, people are deactivating their Instagram accounts
For once, you didn’t need me to point out the unethical happenings of Facebook, Inc. when the mainstream media actually cared. First we had the Murdoch Press run ‘The Facebook Files’ in The Wall Street Journal, which I heard about from the incomparable and insightful Bob Hoffman on the 26th ult. The WSJ begins: […]
Lucire’s Instagram is toast (hopefully temporarily, but you never know), since they unilaterally allege without evidence that there was unusual activity. This is utter shite, but it’s just another day in Facebookland where actual spam is tolerated, and legitimate activity is penalized. I’ve sent through the information they requested with a review promised in […]
Read More… from Lucire’s Instagram account is gone, for no reason
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
‘We can’t level, you crazy bastard, we’re in advertising!’—Paul Reiser as Stephen Bachman, in Crazy People (1990) Signal You can run ads with misinformation, and you can launch bot nets of thousands of accounts, but what can’t you do on Facebook? Buy ads that expose their tools with which you have bought their […]
Read More… from How to get your Facebook ad account shut down: do something honest
I’m still blocked from seeing my advertising preferences on Facebook on the desktop, the only place where you can edit them, something that has plagued them for years and which they’re unlikely to fix. I commonly say that Facebook’s databases are ‘shot to hell,’ which I’ve believed for many years, and this is another example […]
Read More… from A sure way to lose customers: upload their private information to Facebook
With the new season of Alarm für Cobra 11: die Autobahnpolizei nearly upon us, I decided I’d pop into my Facebook group (I’m still an admin) to see what had been happening. I’ve been there a few times this week and I have discovered some of the site’s latest features. Groups: these now have […]
Whaddya know? Uploading an Instagram video with an Android 7-based phone is fine if it’s on a Chinese OS and not a western one. This was a bug I wrote about nearly two years ago, and I wasn’t alone. Others had difficulties with their Android 7 phones with getting Instagram videos to play smoothly: […]
Read More… from Switching to a Chinese OS solves another Instagram bug
Here’s a cautionary tale found by Lucire travel editor Stanley Moss. His words: ‘Photographer Dmitry Kostyukov recently experienced a rich dialogue with an algorithm belonging to a Scandinavian swimwear company. He’d been auto-mistaken for a Y chromosome, and digitally invited to become a brand ambassador. Dmitry accepted, and received the sample suit of his choice, […]
Read More… from Don’t rely on an algorithm to choose your brand ambassadors
It’s true. I spent time on business development, answering emails, doing tech stuff on our sites, and generally kept on top of things. I often wonder if I would have become an active Facebooker or Tweeter had they been invented and come into my orbit in, say, 2002. We all may have been too busy […]