Gage Skidmore/Creative Commons On Andrew Yang’s run for the Democratic nomination in the US: If Mastodon ever stops supporting that Javascript, I wrote: ‘Pretty stoked at what Andrew Yang has managed to achieve. Certain forces tried to minimize his coverage, to give him as little legitimacy as possible (sounds familiar). Yet he also normalized the […]
Read More… from Andrew Yang’s campaign: #YangGang was just the beginning
With the Twitter advertising preference monster continuing to gather preferences on all of us even after opting out—which basically makes Twitter Facebook—I decided to switch the Mastodon–Twitter Crossposter around. With Twitter being my main social network, I was quite happy to allow the Crossposter to take my Tweets and turn them into Toots on […]
Read More… from Mastodon before Twitter: time to change my main social network
As with most platforms, I selected, on Twitter, that I didn’t want my advertising to be personalized. I don’t mind them making a buck, but I do mind them tracking my preferences, just as I did with Google and Facebook. Google lied about its advertising preferences from 2009 to 2011 till yours truly busted […]
Read More… from Twitter also tracks your preferences, even after you opt out of ad customization
Surprisingly, Vivaldi hadn’t notified me of any updates for months—I was on v. 2.05, and had no idea that they were up to 2.10. Having upgraded manually, I noticed its handling of type had deteriorated. Here is one paragraph in Lucire: My font settings had also changed. Coincidentally, I downloaded Opera GX last […]
Read More… from Switching to Opera GX from Vivaldi: I needed the better type rendering
There are websites such as CBS News in the US that no longer let us here in New Zealand view them. US Auto Trader is another one. It’s a damned shame, because I feel it’s a stab at the heart of what made the internet great—the fact that we could be in touch with each […]
Read More… from The “fortress America” approach to the internet fuels piracy
Yesterday, I received an email purporting to be from Facebook, with the body reading: Hi, We are obliged to inform you that your page has been flagged because of unusual and illegal activity, therefore your page might be permanently deleted. In order to avoid such actions from our side, you need to fill the forms […]
Read More… from Warning about Facebook “copyright” phishing scam—which Facebook itself covers for
I’ve discovered that the newer the Instagram, the buggier it is. We’ve already seen that it can’t cope with video if you use Android 7 (a great way to reduce video bandwidth), and, earlier this year, filters do not work. I downgraded to version 59 till, last week, Instagram began deleting direct messages as […]
Read More… from The newer the Instagram, the buggier; and why no one should use Google Drive
Facebook’s advertising preferences are getting more useless by the day. Even a company as dodgy as Google has managed to keep its preference page working. Over the years I’ve been telling people that they can delete their interests from Facebook if they’re uncomfortable with the targeting, since Facebook gathers these interests even when you […]
Read More… from Facebook takes away user control over their own advertising preferences
I had a call from a nice gentleman working for Google called Shabhaz today. No, he wasn’t about to tell me that I wasn’t on the ‘first page of Google’: he worked for Google My Business, where they want to verify businesses and suck them into the ecosystem, complete with dashboard and social features. […]
Read More… from Has Google My Business ever given you business?
Thanks to my friend Bill Shepherd, I’ve now subscribed to The Ad Contrarian newsletter. Bob Hoffman is one of the few who gets it when it comes to how insignificant the FTC’s Facebook fine is. Five (American) billion (American) dollars sounds like a lot to you and me, but considering Facebook’s stock rose on […]
Read More… from Facebook is getting away with it again—even though it knew about Cambridge Analytica