Rand Fishkin’s ‘Something is Rotten in Online Advertising’

I’ve been meaning to link Rand Fishkin’s ‘Something is Rotten in Online Advertising’ for some time, so here it is. He writes, in his second and third paragraphs (links in original): Where to even begin… Should we start with the upcoming loss of third-party cookies? The bizarre Google & Facebook duopoly teamup against anti-trust action? The rise […]

Read More… from Rand Fishkin’s ‘Something is Rotten in Online Advertising’



If corporate America says it, it’s probably untrue

Le dernier.   I see the Le Snak range has now left us, after its US owner PepsiCo cited a lack of demand. I call bullshit, since during 2021 it was becoming increasingly difficult to find them on the shelves. Throttling distribution is not the same as a lack of demand, something you see time […]

Read More… from If corporate America says it, it’s probably untrue



Kissing that Disqus advertising money goodbye (webmasters beware)

I’m going to have to write off what Disqus owes us. No response to this thread, and no response to a DM I sent at their request. Please DM us your account name and site shortname and we will be happy to look into this for you. — DisqusSupport (@DisqusSupport) July 8, 2022 I assume […]

Read More… from Kissing that Disqus advertising money goodbye (webmasters beware)



We have been warned

Let fellow Tweeters have the say on today’s events in the USA. I feel 0 smugness about living in NZ right now. America is exporting their brand of fascism. It’s already here. We are 18 months from a potential change in government. We’ve seen how quickly a country goes backwards. I was there for it. […]

Read More… from We have been warned



Pirate sites, content mills and splogs exist because of Google

In chatting to Alexandra Wolfe on Mastodon about the previous post, I had to draw a sombre conclusion. If it weren’t for Google, there’d be no incentive to do content mills or splogs. I replied: ‘People really are that stupid, and itʼs all thanks to Google. Google doesn’t care about ad fraud, and anyone can […]

Read More… from Pirate sites, content mills and splogs exist because of Google



Send out warmth, get it back

I’ve had a nice resolution after reaching out to FashioNZ over their Instagram tagline and a claim made on their website. There was a delay in their response due to the site being sold to its fifth owners (I must be out of touch, as I never knew who the second and third were!), but […]

Read More… from Send out warmth, get it back



More evidence that contextual advertising is better than creepy, programmatic behavioural ads

Cory Doctorow posted a link to his collection of links at Pluralistic for August 5, 2020. The first one’s heading piqued my interest: ‘Contextual ads can save media’. It’s worth having a read, especially about the BS behind behavioural advertising (i.e. surveillance advertising) and the ‘real-time bidding’ that so many ad networks have been trying […]

Read More… from More evidence that contextual advertising is better than creepy, programmatic behavioural ads



How to end social media censorship

Kristina Flour/Unsplash   This Twitter thread by Yishan Wong is one of the most interesting I’ve come across. Not because it’s about Elon Musk (who he begins with), but because it’s about the history of the web, censorship, and the reality of running a social platform. Here are some highlights (emphases in the original): There […]

Read More… from How to end social media censorship



Hopefully this week: farewell, Amazon Web Services

  Wow, we’re nearly there: the long journey to migrate our sites off AWS and on to a new box. We began hosting there in 2012 but the server—which appears to have had a single major update in 2016—was getting very old. In 2018 we began searching for someone who knew about migrations. A second […]

Read More… from Hopefully this week: farewell, Amazon Web Services



Replacement for Notepad found, but what about Windows Explorer?

  Now that Microsoft won’t let us type certain characters into Notepad (anything above ASCII 127, at least on a standard US keyboard), I’ve had to look for alternatives.    This is a daft move on Microsoft’s part as I am sure I am not the only person in the world who needs to type […]

Read More… from Replacement for Notepad found, but what about Windows Explorer?