Found 13 bookmarks
Custom sorting
Annalee Newitz: A Better Internet Is Waiting for Us (NYT)
Annalee Newitz: A Better Internet Is Waiting for Us (NYT)
We don’t have to lose our digital public spaces to state manipulation. What if future companies designed media to facilitate democracy right from the beginning? Is it possible to create a form of digital communication that promotes consensus-building and civil debate, rather than divisiveness and conspiracy theories? […] Twitter and Facebook executives often say that their services are modeled on a “public square.” But the public square is more like 1970s network television, where one person at a time addresses the masses. On social media, the “square” is more like millions of karaoke boxes running in parallel, where groups of people are singing lyrics that none of the other boxes can hear. And many members of the “public” are actually artificial beings controlled by hidden individuals or organizations. There isn’t a decent real-world analogue for social media, and that makes it difficult for users to understand where public information is coming from, and where their personal information is going. […] The legacy of social media will be a world thirsty for new kinds of public experiences. To rebuild the public sphere, we’ll need to use what we’ve learned from billion-dollar social experiments like Facebook, and marginalized communities like Black Twitter. We’ll have to carve out genuinely private spaces too, curated by people we know and trust.
·nytimes.com·
Annalee Newitz: A Better Internet Is Waiting for Us (NYT)
Jon Evans: Facebook isn’t free speech, it’s algorithmic amplification optimized for outrage (TechCrunch)
Jon Evans: Facebook isn’t free speech, it’s algorithmic amplification optimized for outrage (TechCrunch)
The problem is that Facebook doesn’t offer free speech; it offers free amplification. No one would much care about anything you posted to Facebook, no matter how false or hateful, if people had to navigate to your particular page to read your rantings, as in the very early days of the site. But what people actually read on Facebook is what’s in their News Feed … and its contents, in turn, are determined not by giving everyone an equal voice, and not by a strict chronological timeline. What you read on Facebook is determined entirely by Facebook’s algorithm, which elides much — censors much, if you wrongly think the News Feed is free speech — and amplifies little. What is amplified? Two forms of content. For native content, the algorithm optimizes for engagement. This in turn means people spend more time on Facebook, and therefore more time in the company of that other form of content which is amplified: paid advertising.
·techcrunch.com·
Jon Evans: Facebook isn’t free speech, it’s algorithmic amplification optimized for outrage (TechCrunch)
Sarah Jeong: No, Facebook Is Not Secretly Listening to You (NYT)
Sarah Jeong: No, Facebook Is Not Secretly Listening to You (NYT)
(Except when it is.) --- Being upfront about the humans who operate behind a curtain of artificial intelligence would mean looking less ingenious, less innovative, less omniscient. But users deserve to be in the know and able to make informed decisions about what devices to allow in their homes and on their persons
·nytimes.com·
Sarah Jeong: No, Facebook Is Not Secretly Listening to You (NYT)
Maria Bustillos: Zuck Bucks Suxxxxx (Hmm Daily)
Maria Bustillos: Zuck Bucks Suxxxxx (Hmm Daily)
Proponents of Libra are all yabbering on about “serving the world’s unbanked,” as if it were 15 or 20 years ago. For more than a decade, Kenya has already had M-Pesa, a thriving micropayments system based on trading cell minutes!! M-Pesa predates Bitcoin, and has expanded from Kenya through East and Central Africa, and on beyond to the Middle East and India, covering millions of people who most emphatically do not need Mark Zuckerberg sticking his grubby mitts in their wallets. Bitcoin was meant as a curb on the man, perhaps even as a strike against the Man; Libra is the Man.
·hmmdaily.com·
Maria Bustillos: Zuck Bucks Suxxxxx (Hmm Daily)
Lindsay Zoladz: Ordinary Machines: Cold Facts (Pitchfork)
Lindsay Zoladz: Ordinary Machines: Cold Facts (Pitchfork)
Up until very recently, I'd recount my online experiences with some degree of shame or sheepishness, but in this apocalyptic year of 2012, that embarrassment is beginning to fall by the wayside. I've been having more and more conversations with people grappling with what is gained and lost by how some of our most meaningful musical discoveries-- not to mention life experiences-- have happened in front of, or facilitated by, screens. We're starting to come to terms with the fact that modern life is a constant, awkward/elegant oscillation between the digital and physical, faces and FaceTime, and we're starting to hear music that reflects this reality, the beginnings of a new ordinary.
·pitchfork.com·
Lindsay Zoladz: Ordinary Machines: Cold Facts (Pitchfork)
Will Oremus: Instagram privacy uproar: Why it's absurd, in three nearly identical sentences. (Slate)
Will Oremus: Instagram privacy uproar: Why it's absurd, in three nearly identical sentences. (Slate)
On the bright side, by interpreting the confusing policy in the most alarming possible light, the tech press has forced Instagram to toe the line more carefully than it otherwise might have. That's a win for users
·slate.com·
Will Oremus: Instagram privacy uproar: Why it's absurd, in three nearly identical sentences. (Slate)
Paul Ford: Why Facebook Has Not Already Peaked (New York Magazine)
Paul Ford: Why Facebook Has Not Already Peaked (New York Magazine)
Which brings us back to the question: Have we reached peak Facebook? And no, we haven’t. Even if Facebook never adds another user, it will keep growing: It has become a fundamental substrate, a difficult-to-avoid component of any site or app that requires users to register—making it essential to nearly every major web innovation now and in the future. There’s a related question: Is Facebook ever going to be cool again? That’s like asking “Is the phone company cool?” The interface may not be exciting anymore, but the network is very, very cool, in the disruptively awesome way that enormous things are: volcanoes, aircraft carriers, the New Deal.
·nymag.com·
Paul Ford: Why Facebook Has Not Already Peaked (New York Magazine)
Paul Ford: Facebook and Instagram: When Your Favorite App Sells Out (New York Magazine)
Paul Ford: Facebook and Instagram: When Your Favorite App Sells Out (New York Magazine)
Tens of millions of people made a decision to spend their time with the simple, mobile photo-sharing application that was not Facebook because they liked its subtle interface and little filters. And so Facebook bought the thing that is hardest to fake. It bought sincerity.
·nymag.com·
Paul Ford: Facebook and Instagram: When Your Favorite App Sells Out (New York Magazine)