Recent Articles

That’s a pretty fucking tame headline compared to what is in the article. A better more accurate headline might be: ‘Facebook is actively causing people to be lynched.’

Amanda Taub and Max Fisher reporting on this hellacious situation:

We came to this house to try to understand the forces of social disruption that have followed Facebook’s rapid expansion in the developing world, whose markets represent the company’s financial future. For months, we had been tracking riots and lynchings around the world linked to misinformation and hate speech on Facebook, which pushes whatever content keeps users on the site longest — a potentially damaging practice in countries with weak institutions.

Basically, the same shit that got Trump elected, turned up to 11, and mixed with no trusted sources of information to calm the anger. It gets worse:

Some messages included photos of dismembered bodies or fake police fliers. Almost immediately, locals in nine villages lynched outsiders they suspected of coming for their children.

Those photos were shared on WhatsApp and Facebook, and spread like wild fire. And the amazing thing is that the government is aware of the issue and is actively fighting to try and get correct information out, and has repeatedly asked Facebook for help:

Officials had pleaded with Facebook representatives, in a meeting in October, to better police hate speech and misinformation, which they warned could spiral into violence. They asked the company to establish an emergency point of contact in case it did. In a separate meeting, civic leaders urged Facebook to hire Sinhalese-speaking moderators to staff its reporting tool.

What say ye Facebook:

The Facebook employees left offering only vague promises, officials said.

There’s no Facebook office in the country. The lack of empathy in Facebook as a company is bewildering. I’ve gone ahead and deleted WhatsApp, and once I’ve figured out how to support my wife as a photographer without Instagram, I’ll delete that account and app too.

Gus Mueller:

Here’s an idea I’ve been tossing around lately- Apple should make an Instagram clone for iCloud users.

I think Micro.blog’s Sunlit gets you pretty close to a more open Instagram, with the big missing feature being the stories. Worth checking out if you’ve been earning for a better way to share experiences.

Sunlit does quite a few things better. For one it’s better to share events, or trips, as it includes checkins and groups large sets of photos together. However, as is the curse of Micro.blog it is far less discoverable. The backbone though is just a blog, and remember photoblogging? That used to be a thing, and it was glorious.

Brittany Kaiser as reported by Jake Kanter:

“I believe it is almost certain that the number of Facebook users whose data was compromised through routes similar to that used by Kogan is much greater than 87 million; and that both Cambridge Analytica and other unconnected companies and campaigns were involved in these activities.”

I think it’s very safe to assume that if you have a Facebook account, or had one at any point between 2014 and now, that your personal data was compromised and remains “out there”. If that’s not enough to get you to leave, then I don’t know that you fully understand how dangerous that data can be and is.

While I don’t agree with his keyboard (ugly) and stand (clamp stands worry me) choices, he’s got the right idea with the portrait typing perspective — it’s really a better way to write.

After all of my testing of content blockers for iOS, 1Blocker is the app that remains on all of my devices. It’s easy to use, with tons of extra power when you need it. They are coming out with a new version (I’ve been testing it, I’ll have more notes on that soon) called 1Blocker X. It’s available for pre-order now, and it’s at least as good as the last version, which makes it the industry standard — so you should get it. One really neat feature of the new app is that country specific rules, which I hope to look into more.

M.G. Siegler:

There’s something that has been in the back of my mind for some time now. And while it pre-dates the Facebook fiasco, that situation certainly brings it to the forefront. Increasingly, it feels like people in our industry, the tech industry, are losing touch with reality.

Important read.

Matt Gemmell:

Whenever I talk about the iPad as a work machine, I get some pushback that essentially says it’s not viable because it doesn’t do such-and-such. That’s fine — as long as you frame it accurately. Is it about a deficiency of modern computing, or is it just that you need something that isn’t actually tied to traditional computing, which may temporarily be unavailable for newer stuff?

Good article, pairs nicely with the member post from this week.

Adam Clark Estes:

So this is a positive review. That’s because it’s refreshing for Apple to release a product that works great and doesn’t compromise your family’s financial future. I wasn’t sure I wanted an iPad, basically, since the iPad came out. I want this one. That’s honestly a rare feeling for me, because there are so many unwantable or too-expensive gadgets in the world. When the next new iPad comes out, I doubt I’ll want it because it will cost too much. But this Apple thing—I’m surprised to admit—it’s a good value.

Every iPad is a good value, because unlike iPhones you don’t have to replace them yearly. My main machine is the first generation iPad Pro and I couldn’t be happier with it. It’s just that the latest iPad, is a phenomenally good value.

Interesting how Instagram is both a platform which bolsters self-confidence, and makes one insecure. Seems fairly obvious to me, and I would suspect that the negative impacts only start to out weigh the positive as the user base ages. That’s just my gut though.

This is probably the post they should have had when Micro.blog came out.

The weather one is one I’ve been wanting for a while. And most of these seem pretty doable.

Christina Farr:

While the data shared would obscure personally identifiable information, such as the patient’s name, Facebook proposed using a common computer science technique called “hashing” to match individuals who existed in both sets. Facebook says the data would have been used only for research conducted by the medical community.

This is fine, it’s not like data earmarked for only one type of application every gets out.

Mohit Kumar:

On Wednesday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed that “malicious actors” took advantage of “Search” tools on its platform to discover the identities and collect information on most of its 2 billion users worldwide.

Facebook is quite like Trump right now: what they are doing and have done would otherwise have sunk other companies/politicians — however both stand there telling people that it happened, they’ll do something about it eventually (maybe), but really don’t worry about it. It feels to me like Zuckerberg is basically daring the world to try and do something to stop him, because he believes it is simply not possible. And thus far, he’s not been wrong.

Looks really solid, I just switched my router to using it.