Tag: hdi

Public Service Internet monthly newsletter (Aug 2024)

Fight today for a better tomorrow
Fight today for a better tomorrow

We live in incredible times with such possibilities that is clear. Although its easily dismissed while seeing Palestinians accounts shut down by Microsoft for no clear reason, a look at the global suppression of LGBTQ+ speech and the endless AI scraping.

To quote Buckminster Fuller “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.“

You are seeing aspects of this with a new Swiss law for the public sector, researchers using AI chat bots against scammers and the wrongful arrest of a black man down to facial recognition, knocking on to wider reform.

Crowd strike: the result of move fast break society?

Ian thinks: There is so much about the worldwide outage due to Microsoft and Crowd strike. Zitron zooms out and points fingers at shareholders supremacy , recent tech layoffs and the silicon value of move fast and break things.

What is the difference between Green growth and Degrowth

Ian thinks: In this thoughtful discussion Hickel outlines a number of key concepts of degrowth including, the assumption the rich countries should continue to increase growing for the rest of the century. Plus the metric of growth based on GDP, was never developed for this purpose warned the creator of it.

We let tech take politics out of innovation?

Ian thinks: This talk from Republica is raw and will caused a lot feelings. Deep down under the skin of the talk is the underlying understanding Tante has some very good points including the fact “we let tech take the politics out of innovation.”

Negotiability is needed in car privacy

Ian thinks: This video builds on the huge data privacy problem of modern cars. There is a huge problem of negotiability with the contracts you sign. Access to emergency service is important but that shouldn’t mean data being shared with an unknown amount of data brokers. Its time for a change.

Can alternative business models survive in the future?

Ian thinks: This short documentary about John Lewis and Waitrose is quite telling as their business model feels so obscure now, especially in the face of stakeholder capitalism or as others call it Shareholder Supremacy. You can see the same of public service broadcasting and likewise their are lessons and difficult decisions which need to be made before its too late.

The LLM craze / bubble

Ian thinks: Interesting but sweary rant from a senior data scientist about the AI bubble and C-suite’s fascination with it. Good points made counting the business narrative of you need AI for everything.

Human Data Interaction needs to be a standard

Ian thinks: While watching this video about keeping contacts private, I couldn’t stop but think the whole notion of how apps, services and platforms interact with our personal data must change. Human data interaction is a step towards this but it needs standardisation and adopted very soon, because putting the burden on users through scope storage, permissions or installing GrapheneOS isn’t sustainable.

Welcome to the digital afterlife?

Ian thinks: The notion of a digital afterlife will either fill you with dread or joy. But what ever side you come down on, it’s clear existing power laws like enshitfication, surveillance capitalism, etc will be in full effort. Legal reform in this space to give agency to the user is essential and must come soon.

Influencer, human traffiker, and finally jailed

Ian thinks: The story of Kat Torres is a hard one to watch but a important one to see. There will always be influencers but could human scale social networks change this, I wonder?

Find the archive here

Public Service Internet monthly newsletter (Feb 2024)

Limitations of RSS according to Spotify

We live in incredible times with such possibilities that is clear. Although its easily dismissed with questions like will Gaia X survive? What will happen to Firefox? Will our coffee to go habits end us all?

To quote Buckminster Fuller “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.“

You are seeing aspects of this with even rolling stone magazine covering the decentralised and federated web, fully private internet search may happen sooner than expected and Mozilla’s clever demonstration called platform tilt.

The dark dark hole which is pig butchering

Ian thinks: You may have heard of “Pig Butchering” in relation to romance/crypto scams. In this  pretty dark episode of Darknet diaries which deals with violence, scams and death. You realised how deep and dark the scams go.

AI ethics and bias is popping up everywhere

Ian thinks: I have noticed a general exhaustion/ignorance to the problem of bias in AI. This short video from Channel 4 is a timely reminder of how it manifests and for us all to take some responsibility.

Post office scandal, the computer says No

Ian thinks: The post office scandal is simply awful all over. People have lost the faith of their communities, family and even lost their lives. All due to a not fit for purpose computer system (Fujitsu’s Horizon). What makes things worst is all the people who sided with the computer system over the huge evidence of the post office masters/mistresses. Also interesting it took a TV show to push the whole scandal into the public conscious.

AI hype distraction?

Ian thinks: I liked this for many reasons but the distraction technique used by many people who con others is somewhat clear to see across a lot of the AI stories I see. I did wonder if I was the only one?

Surveillance capitalism and open standards don’t mix?

Ian thinks: The podcast industry is feeling the pinch due to advertisers wanting to know more about the listener. Spotify’s has always offered a closed platform and rejected RSS for this reason. However, Apple will start supporting the open Podcast namespace around transcripts.

Why privacy matters

Ian thinks: I recently shared this video with a few people who have started drinking the cool-aid about privacy is over. Its something of a timely reminder at the top of the year, of the importance of privacy for everyone.

The hype machine

Ian thinks: I recently read the hype machine by Sinan Aral. I expected most of the points but I did find the influence on society points, stronger than I imagined. The depth of the arguments are worthy of reading and of course acting on.

The AI hardware devices got interesting

Ian thinks: There is renew interest in new/alternative user interfaces and although AI is all the rage, our smartphones are fighting back (as the video shows). When I think about this all, I can’t help but wonder about the infrastructure. Leaning on Human Data Interaction guidelines, many of them mask the data from the human.

The word of 2023, Enshittification

Ian thinks: Congrats to Cory on a word which sums up so much about the current internet business model but also doing something about it. I remember Cory being quite critical of surveillance capitalism and emphasising the problem of monopolies, lack of agency and interoperability.

Worth noting Cory’s sequel to Red Team Blues, the Bezzle is available.

Find the archive here

My Data: Public spaces / Private data

Mydata 2019 conference card

I’m back at Mydata this year, this time with more colleagues, Publicspaces.net and the Finnish public broadcaster YLE.

If you are at Mydata, our event is in Hall H from 14:00 – 15:45 on the opening day of Wednesday 25th September.

More and more people live their lives online, and we are encouraged to view the internet as a public space. However the personal data we bring to this space can be used in many inappropriate ways: Instagram stories are scraped to target advertisement; faces in family photographs are used to train the ML systems that will scan crowds for suspects; the devices we thought we owned end up owning us; and our browsing histories are stored and scanned by governments and private companies. This creates a tension for public service organisations as they try to deliver value to audiences and users online.

In this session experts from the BBC Research & Development, Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE, and PublicSpaces will consider how to resolve these tensions, and look at some specific interventions aimed at providing value to audiences and communities through the responsible use of private data in online public spaces.

The format will be four brief talks and a round table discussion.

Chair: Rhianne Jones (BBC)
PublicSpaces and an internet for the common good: Sander van der Waal (PublicSpaces)
The Living Room of the Future:  Ian Forrester (BBC)
How public service media can engage online; Aleksi Rossi (YLE)
Data Stewardship and the BBC Box:  Jasmine Cox/ Max Leonard (BBC)

If this interests you, don’t forget to add yourself to the London event with a similar name. Public Spaces, Private Data: can we build a better internet?

User permission opt in or out? Time for HDI!

3 mobiles optin privacy
Is grey opt in or opt out?

I’m one of those people who look at terms when using services or purchasing IOT devices. I also dont accept the cookie warnings unless I’m actually happy to use the service. This does make looking at any Oath/Yahoo site a pain for a while, as they use to have accept or nothing else (this changed).

Very sure a lot of the companies deliberately put up painful cookie notices to mislead their users. If this isn’t a dark pattern it should be?

Recently I noticed this cheeky one from the three mobile app. You can assume the sliders when grey are not active and the purple one on? But there’s no actual clear sign to say what is active/on and whats inactive/not. Its also interesting that the grey ones are the default, which you would assume are active/on in every other example you have experienced of this.

Another clear call for Human Data Interaction (HDI).

BBC’s role in data-led services

Public Service Internet

Two good blog posts outlining the BBC’s ambitions were posted to various BBC blogs on this week.

First Matthew Postgate (CTPO of the BBC) looks at the BBC’s future role in  a data-led landscape. He mentions the BBC box which then links to work we’ve been researching in BBC R&D around the databox project.

Gizmodo started to unpick this a little, The BBC is Doing Cloud Storage and Wants You to Have Full Control Over Your Data. The interest is a good thing of course…

It was clear to me back when I first spoke to Nottingham University about the databox project, it was something different, a possible way forward following the newly established HDI principles. It was tricky to understand (and you get that sense in the Gizmodo piece) but the box infrastructure kept everything honest. If you told me 4 years later after I first published the ethics of data videos.. I’d be debating with Tim Burners-Lee about the merits of Databox vs Solid at Mozfest 2018… I wouldn’t have believed you.

I look forward to seeing where things go next with Databox/BBC Box, this for me is the BBC embracing the change and doubling down on its public service. But lets not forget the other experiments using databox at their heart as they are also part of the change.

A spy under the tree for the holidays?

The Observer on IOT and spying

Quite enjoyed Guardian’s piece about the raff of home iot devices coming to the home these holidays.

If you’ve so far withstood the temptation to install a smart speaker in your home, worried about the potential privacy pitfalls and a bit embarrassed about the notion of chatting aimlessly to an inanimate object, brace yourselves. This Christmas, the world’s biggest tech giants, including Amazon, Google and Facebook, are making another bid for your living room, announcing a range of new devices that resemble tablets you can talk to.

It was a real welcome surprise to read/hear Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino too. Her new book Smarter Homes: How Technology Will Change Your Home Life is pretty much on the money.

“It’s very clear what they’re trying to do: sell you more stuff through third-party use of your own information,”

The fear about whether or not such devices are actually always on causes some users to relegate their smart speakers to corridors. “Think about where in the home you want to use these things, particularly if you think they might be listening all the time,”

I had the joy of capturing some of Alexandra’s early thoughts while putting together the ethics of personal data video interviews back in 2015.

I think the only thing missing from the article is a link to Mozilla’s buyers guide, which charts in a friendly consumer fashion whats actually going on underneath the surface of the iot devices we may get over the holiday period.