Thoughts and ideas of a dyslexic designer/developer
So many people are doing the Facebook 10 year challenge and I’m so happy to see the Wired’s piece asking the question of what Facebook could be doing with the photos.
Of course some people think its all blown out of proportion, cue Jeff Jarvis on Twit recently. As Leo says at the end of the clip, Facebook and others will lie and claim one thing, but from past experience we have caught them lying.
So I did a quick copy and filled it in on my facebook.
I decided to add it here and add some comments.
💍 Marriages: 1
💔 Divorces: 1
🍼Children: 0 (Thankfully)
👩🏼⚕️ Surgeries: 3 (Arm burn, Nose and Brain)
✒Tattoos: 0 (No chance I count my burn as one massive one)
👂🏼Piercings:0 (No bloody way!)
✋🏼Quit a job: Yes
🚘What car you drive : None (But I do have my lovely Silverwing 600cc Scooter)
✈️Flown in a plane: Yes (geez luckily dooplr doesn’t exist anymore because I must have been on about 15+ just this year)
🍹Favourite Drink: Espresso Martini or Cosmopolitan (I’m torn between the two, depending on mood)
❤Fallen in love: Yes
🚑Rode in ambulance: Yes (a few times with friends and myself)
🎤Sang karaoke: Yes (and hated it, each time)
❄Ice skating: Yes (still not great but can do it)
🏄Been surfing: No (tempted in the past)
🚢Been on a Cruise: No (plus I get seasick easily so it sounds like a nightmare to me)
🏍Rode on a motorcycle: Yes (everyday, not a big deal for me)
🏍Owned a motorcycle: Yes (about 5 in total)
🐴Rode on a horse: Yes (Believe it or not, and not ever again please)
😲Almost died: Yes (#mybrushwithdeath)
🏥Stayed in a hospital: Yes
🍑Favorite fruit: Granny smiths apples
📲Last phone call: Restaurant in Manchester (I was checking the availability of a table)
📱Last text: To my partner
🍵️Coffee or Tea: Tea (I love coffee but I can’t drink it like I use to, Tea on the other hand I can drink all day no problem)
🥧Favourite pie: None! (Hate them, I’m all about the Cornish Pasties)
🍕Pizza: Pizza Express’s Padana, which is Goats Cheese, Caremlised red onions, Spinach and Olive oil
🐈 Cat or Dogs: Cats (although I’m allergic to them, they don’t like to bite & chase me like dogs do)
☃️ Favorite Season: Summer (Sometimes its too hot but I prefer it to the cold and wet rain of Spring and Autumn. Also love walking around with just a short sleeve shirt)
♥️: Favorite holiday: Tokyo Japan (although crazy and always under threat of eating something which is going to kill me, I did enjoy it a lot)
🏊♂️: Skinny dipped: Yes
Twitter is seriously getting up to no good.
Today, our User Streams, Site Streams, and legacy Direct Message endpoints will begin a brief period of degraded service before being retired entirely.
Developers using these services can learn more and find migration guides on the forum: https://t.co/hedzTXO6as
— Twitter API (@TwitterAPI) August 16, 2018
Its super clear the openness of twitter is being stopped, told to stand against a wall with hands up and then shot in the head. Its not good and frankly, I don’t know about you but its starting to pee me off. I recently posted something to my facebook timeline about Facebook’s decision to stop automated posting under a persons account. Another frustrating thing as I was practising the POSSE method from the IndieWeb movement..
Facebook is no longer allowing automatically post to peoples profile. Meaning this timeline is going to get very quiet!
If you want to catch up with things check out www.cubicgarden.com and www.twitter.com/cubicgarden
Because of this my facebook interactions are mainly going to be checking my events including Volleyball training.
All this makes me think its time to double down on Mastodon? Of course I’m not the only one thinking this, cue Adrian and Naomia‘s mastodon 101 podcast.
The more I look at the more I think close my twitter account and just use Mastodon. Although the crossposter was helping till Twitter API changes broke that too.
It will be a shame to say goodbye but the more I see what twitter is about and see what Mastodon users are doing like listing the abuses/hate/rule breaks in different Mastodon instances into Github. I think this is the place to be and the whole setup/framework/infrastructure is what makes it all this possible. Heck with a bunch of the new W3C specs like Webmentions, Fragmention and Micropub; I can see companies which enable/power their users really making amazing sustainable humane services.
Lessons from Starfish & the Spider, lets make a better internet together!
It so reminds me of Uber’s sorry not sorry ads…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMZyw5lPKgE
Facebook announces dating and some are surprised?
At F8, Facebook’s annual developer conference, Mark Zuckerberg announced a new dating service, simply called “Dating,” that will exist right within the social network’s own app. It will allow Facebook users to create separate profiles from their main Facebook accounts to pursue romantic connections. The two profiles won’t interact, meaning your Facebook friends won’t be able to see what your Dating profile says. And it should make dating app incumbents like Tinder and Bumble anxious.
Hummmm, really… from previous posts I wrote
Of course I certainly wasn’t the only one writing about this, you only had to look at the way people were using Facebook. I guess you have to give Facebook credit for understanding what its users were doing. That or the amount of data the likes of Tinder & Bumble were using; convinced Facebook that screw Cambridge Analytica, this is a way to get in on the action before its too late? Just as they started to rethink things?
Is Matchgroup worried? They should be, because there attitude for their customers sucks big time and Facebook may scoop in and convince those customers easily. On top of that Bumble is suing them for 400 million. Not a trivial amount…
I have so many pieces saved in my wallabag archive about the faccebook/cambridge analytica data issues (it is not a breach!). As I read, more information comes to light.
But I am always reminded of what Zuckerberg said about its trusted users… and it sums up so much.
Dumb fucks…
The thing about the statement is although it might be throw away in nature it speaks volumes about the way Zuckerberg thinks about Facebook users. It also interesting to think how Facebook is makes users feel that way, taking the power and control out of their hands. The reactions to the reveals have been so-so like when Edward Snowdon revealed the mass surveillance of millions of citizens around the world.
But its super clear, no matter how powerless we all feel, its super important to not lose sight that these giant companies have weaponised data, algorithms and psychology against us all. Running from one service to another isn’t so helpful in the long run.
We need to be more conscious about our decisions physically, mentally and virtually or be the dumb fucks Zuckerberg talked about.
I never got the chance to write about Facebook and Cambridge Analytica due to being on holiday and to be fair I wrote about them so much before.
Generally I personally think Zuckerberg’s response is just rubbish and far far too late.
Regardless, as expected GDPR was going to force their hand anyway, so they have implicated some of the changes needed to comply.
Regardless, its clear there needs to be changes we use these services if at all!
This is why I found Firefox Multi-Account Containers an interesting idea.
Firefox Multi-Account Containers lets you keep parts of your online life separated into color-coded tabs that preserve your privacy. Cookies are separated by container, allowing you to use the web with multiple identities or accounts simultaneously.
Its the reason I have 4 different browsers on my laptop and 3 on my smartphone. I don’t expect it to catch on but using the paradigm of containers could be quite good for those looking to separate things out a little. However profiles never seem to catch on, but the colour thing could make it much similar.
Mark Zuckerberg started posting his personal challenge/new years resolutions a while ago. He’s got a long way to go to catch up with myself and others, but regardless…
This year he said a bunch of things including this pile of nonsense.
This time, Zuckerberg talked about the importance of “centralization vs decentralization” in tech — in other words, who is benefitting from tech’s tremendous power.
“A lot of us got into technology because we believe it can be a decentralizing force that puts more power in people’s hands,” he wrote. “But today, many people have lost faith in that promise. With the rise of a small number of big tech companies — and governments using technology to watch their citizens — many people now believe technology only centralizes power rather than decentralizes it.”
Oh how observant you are Zuckerberg. Yawn!
Theres an advert on UK TV these holidays about a bed with USB ports. Of course this isn’t anything too exciting as there have been beds with Bluetooth for a while. But it got me thinking about a quote (which I can’t find now) but roughly goes…
“The aim of smartphone apps like facebook is to be the first thing you look at when waking up. Levels of success are measured by how long you spend in bed not moving just consuming.” – Power phrased….
Wish I could find the original quote because its sounded even more scary than what I could remember. Ideal ways to never deal with your smartphone addiction.
Unknown to me, Facebook threw up a old post I created in 2014.
Why?
I have absolutely no idea, but honestly makes me trust Facebook even less. Usually Facebook and Google will surface stuff from the past and ask if you want to share/make it public. This isn’t one of those, it just appeared and friends started commenting and liking again.
Regardless, I was planning to do something similar again so here’s my holiday card for the holiday period; for family, friends and followers. Happy Holidays and look forward to 2018, as 2017 has been pretty poor (but not as bad as 2016)
There so much talk about Facebook and other west coast megacorps (the 5 stacks) listening in on our conversations. To be fair its part of the reason why I don’t like Whatsapp who own and can do what ever they like to the metadata of your conversations. It’s all become a bit of an urban legend, but to be fair the megacorps are doing an incredibly bad job explaining how things are happening (little to no transparency, but to be fair it’s not fitting with their business model).
Even a recent episode of Reply All tackled this field – #109 Is Facebook spying on you.
You can look & listen to the rising concern the public have around their privacy; and the increasing number of stories. I you can’t help but think maybe there is a change coming? Or at least I’d like to think so… but its clear there is a lack of understanding of data by the general public.
For example
“One of the things that Facebook can do is if you like something, it can advertise that thing to your friends. So the brother-in-law obviously signaled to Facebook that he was into white supremacy somehow, and Charles’ friend was liking a lot of the guy’s posts, and they were friends on Facebook, so Facebook was like, “Alright, well, why don’t I advertise this white supremacist stuff to you.”
If you actually read the Facebook EULA, it actually says this but certainly not in such clear human readable words (its been a long while since I skimmed the FB eula, so may have changed – but doubt it). In my own experience, it’s also very hard for people to envision scenarios where the links matter, hence it may not be the actual data but the links between the data which suddenly make people worry and care; the data taken out of context. Most have no idea how many categories of data Facebook alone are sorting us all into.
This is hard to show and demonstrate without going; without going all black mirror or someones eyes glazing over. In my experience when talking about data most people shrug and say things like, “nothing to hide.”
During Mozfest this year I got the chance to walk around the Glass Room on Charing Cross Road, with the people at the ingenious bar giving out data detox kits. The kits are interesting because it’s aimed at a mass audience and the advice although simple is generally useful. I also found some of the installations good, especially the one where you are swiping through your facebook timeline (it was twitter for me) and 2 mins later, given a printed receipt of your work. (Funny enough, it felt like a lot longer than 2mins but then again, its not really the thing I do regularlly)
We certainly need more of this!
Hopefully more of these public interjections will start to move the discussion on from urban legends to a proper informed discussion about ethical data use. I believe FB and others are capitalising on the general public ignorance and its got to stop.
I have been having a discussion with Tim about Instagram recently. Interestingly its also the launch of Ingrid Goes West.
From tmdb…
Ingrid becomes obsessed with a social network star named Taylor Sloane who seemingly has a perfect life. But when Ingrid decides to drop everything and move west to be Taylor’s friend, her behaviour turns unsettling and dangerous.
It doesn’t sound great, something like Friend Request and Unfriended.
Anyway…
I don’t use it because I have issues with the whole setup of instagram. Without going into too much detail, here’s the main points.
its use and design. Instagram encourages a behaviour I personally don't like. You might but it's not for me @TonyChurnside
— Ian Forrester (@cubicgarden) September 16, 2017
And the last point is a key one, as its clear there are serious problems with seeing this level of fakeness everywhere. Like it or not, it becomes normalised.
It's a very pretty place.
— Tᴏɴʏ Cʜᴜʀɴsɪᴅᴇ (@TonyChurnside) September 15, 2017
I hear some of you say this is no more than what Twitter or Facebook do/enable? and I would somewhat agree… but I have built ways to deal with this partly due to being able to use other apps or types of behaviours which run against the way it was engineered.
For example I don’t really look at the Facebook timeline, as I know its trying to lock me into a filter bubble, somewhat of my own making. Yes I could do a Robert Scoble and manage it into a better bubble, but I just don’t think its worthy of attention; plus Facebook doesn’t share this data in their data portability exports meaning all that work isn’t transferable at all. I know being without Facebook makes things very tricky but I can manage my activity within it right now, this might change of course as FB gets more greedy
Its easy to blame Instagram for all types of ills but its not solely them. Its a combination of Instagram and its share holders, the silicon valley push for winner takes all adoption of everything (dare I say anything about Uber in London) but most of all; ourselves for being suckers to peer pressure, advertising and patterns which are so established others are telling us exactly how they work!
like oven, water heater, bigger fridge.
I don't much care about being instagram ready, it's a fantasy and boring anyway
— RZR (@RachelRayns) August 18, 2017
We blindly follow suit without thinking about the long term effects. Mark Manson suggests the smartphone is going to be this generations cigarettes. When thinking about most peoples experience of the smartphone with Instagram, Facebook and Whatsapp preloaded, I can’t help but think actually he’s got a good point. Its the perfect Black Mirror episode, total fantasy as Rachel said!
We seem to be playing with fire without a true understanding of the consequences. Even if we do, how do you make this clear to others who are suckered in? How do you make this clear in the face of peer & social pressure? How do we make this clear to the next generation, the ones born with visions of a unattainable perfection all around them?
What about just for lurking rather than sharing?
— Tim Dobson (@tdobson) September 15, 2017
I’m not a sucker and won’t be joining to be a poster or lurker just so I can scroll through my friends fake reality pictures.
Ryan congratualted me on having 1000 facebook friends.
Ian did you know that you have exactly 1000 friends at the moment on Facebook? Any time you add someone you now are going to have to delete someone else to maintain this perfect number! … You’re part of an exclusive club!
I said “Ha! Is that really a thing?”
Of course it’s a thing haha when you have the perfect 1000 why would you want anything else?
I have never heard of this and had not really noticed I was now at 1000 friends. I’m assuming this maybe fits with some of the stereotypical very mild traits of OCD, people think about? Same as when some people like solid numbers, absolutes, perfection? To me it makes no difference and I’ll carry on adding friends adhoc.
I wrote a blog about neurodiversity after Kate included me in a tweet about a mother and daughter talking on the listening project. My blogs are shared into Facebook and Marie added a comment, which was simply a picture.
That picture (same as above) spoke volumes. After looking it up, I found the source.
“Ordinary life does not interest me. I seek only the high moments. I am in accord with the surrealists, searching for the marvelous. I want to be a writer who reminds others that these moments exist; I want to prove that there is infinite space, infinite meaning, infinite dimension. But I am not always in what I call a state of grace. I have days of illuminations and fevers. I have days when the music in my head stops. Then I mend socks, prune trees, can fruits, polish furniture. But while I am doing this I feel I am not living.”
Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934
This is something I absolutely subscribe to. You only have to ask friends about my dotted past and look at some of the friends I get up to shenanigans with. I never seeked to fit in or follow other people’s limited constructs of what I should or not do; and to be fair I’ve never been very apologetic about it. Of course it’s not all tea and honey, but it’s just the way I am. Said on the eve of getting undressed on TV.
The last 2 weeks have been difficult to take. Theres been too much I have wanted to say and so much I have wanted to do. I have been thinking and deeply worried we have taken a few steps backwards in evolution.
For me two videos have summed up so much, and I do worry they exist in spaces like Facebook.
Video one is the shooting of Philando Castile, a black man in St Paul, Minnesota. #Blacklivesmatter but you can clearly see this isn’t the case, in a city I have visited and actually enjoyed in the past.
The second video comes in the days after the EU Referendum or Brexit. It shows a racist tram abuse at 8am in the morning in Manchester.
Each person who filmed the killing and abusive attack, showed incredible bravery to stand up and put a camera in the face of such situations. If you are old enough to remember the Rodney King beating, its important to remember George Holliday who filmed the beating.