The path of least resistance: we humans aren’t discerning enough sometimes

I came across a thread at Tedium where Christopher Marlow mentions Pandora Mail as an email client that took Eudora as a starting-point, and moved the game forward (e.g. building in Unicode support).    As some of you know, I’ve been searching for an email client to use instead of Eudora (here’s something I wrote […]

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Twitter’s shadow-banning: not just in the US, as Kiwis get caught up, too

Anthony Quintano/Creative Commons We’ve had years of Google and Facebook acting like arses, but it’s disappointing to see Twitter give us more and more causes for concern.    In 2017, we saw them change their terms and conditions so speaking power to truth is no longer a requirement. You can’t help but think that the […]

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Zuckerberg wants to fix Facebook: too little, too late

WTF: welcome to Facebook. (Creative Commons photograph.) Mark Zuckerberg’s promise to fix Facebook in 2018 is, in my opinion, too little, too late.    However, since I ceased updating my Facebook profile last month, I’ve come across many people who tell me the only reason they stay on it is to keep in touch with […]

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The perfect storm: there’s a spike in users being told by Facebook they have malware today

Many years ago, I was locked out of Facebook for 69 hours. It was completely a Facebook database problem, but in those days, they just locked you out without any explanation. It happened on a Friday. I believed I would not get back in till Facebook staff got back to work on Monday—and I was […]

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Developer creates a tool to expose bigoted, fake Twitter accounts; Twitter bans it

In theory, one of the positive things about social media should be the fact that a company has as much chance of succeeding as an individual. Another is that it shouldn’t matter who you are, you have the same opportunity to get your word out. No one should get special treatment.    But, on Twitter, […]

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After 10 years, it’s time to reduce Facebook sharing even more

Wallula, shared via Creative Commons The following status update was posted on my Facebook wall to some of my friends earlier tonight, though of course the links have been added here. I realize there’s some irony in posting this on Facebook.    Some of you will have noticed that I haven’t been updating as frequently. […]

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Why in 2017, joining Facebook is a bad thing

Reddit, uploaded by GameAlex2005 Holly Jahangiri shared this link with me on Twitter yesterday: Facebook is asking people to upload photos of themselves to prove they’re human.    Good luck with that, because most of the bot accounts do have profile photographs, so this won’t solve a thing.    Of the many bots and fakes […]

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Google News won’t rank you top, even when you broke the story and have the best article

Techcrunch broke the news about Bahtiyar Duysak, the German who worked for Twitter who, on analysing one of US president Donald Trump’s Tweets, considered that he had broken the website’s T&Cs, and shut it down.    This blog post isn’t going to go in depth into the rights or wrongs of this. What it does […]

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Are you close to quitting social media?

Above: Just another regular day on Facebook: find more bots, report them, Facebook does nothing. A friend asked today, for an article he is penning, whether we were close to quitting social media on his Facebook (I realize the irony). Here was my reply (links and styling added). What are your thoughts? Are the big […]

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Trading identities in the 2010s: when corporate branding and personal branding adopt each other’s methods

Above: Brand Kate Moss was probably seen by more people when the model collaborated with Topshop. In 1999, the late Wally Olins sent me his book, Trading Identities: Why Countries and Companies are Taking on Each Other’s Roles, a fine read published by the Foreign Policy Centre that argued that countries were trying to look […]

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