Web Trends Map 2018 (or 'why we can't have nice things')
My son, who’s now 11 years old, used to have iA’s Web Trends Map v4 on his wall. It was produced in 2009, when he was two:
I used it to explain the web to him, as the subway map was a metaphor he could grasp. I’d wondered why iA hadn’t produced more in subsequent years.
Well, the answer is clear in a recent post:
Don’t get too excited. We don’t have it. We tried. We really tried. Many times. The most important ingredient for a Web Trend Map is missing: The Web. Time to bring some of it back.Basically, the web has been taken over by capitalist interests:
The Web has lost its spirit. The Web is no longer a distributed Web. It is, ironically, a couple of big tubes that belong to a handful of companies. Mainly Google (search), Facebook (social) and Amazon (e-commerce). There is an impressive Chinese line and there are some local players in Russia, Japan, here and there. Overall it has become monotonous and dull. What can we do?It's difficult. Although I support the aims, objectives, and ideals of the IndieWeb, I can't help but think it's looking backwards instead of forwards. I'm hoping that newer approaches such as federated social networks, distributed ledgers and databases, and regulation such as GDPR have some impact.
Source: iA
Facebook is an instrument of the state
This should not surprise us:
Facebook now seems to be explicitly admitting that it also intends to follow the censorship orders of the U.S. government.Many people get the majority of their news through Facebook, so censorship isn't just banning someone from a scoail network, it has an impact on the social and democratic life of nation states:
What this means is obvious: that the U.S. government — meaning, at the moment, the Trump administration — has the unilateral and unchecked power to force the removal of anyone it wants from Facebook and Instagram by simply including them on a sanctions list. Does anyone think this is a good outcome? Does anyone trust the Trump administration — or any other government — to compel social media platforms to delete and block anyone it wants to be silenced?Source: The Intercept
Your New Year's resolution for 2018? Ditch Facebook.
If something’s been pre-filtered by Cory Doctorow and Jason Kottke then you know it’s going to be good. Sure enough, the open memo, to all marginally-smart people/consumers of internet “content” by Foster Kamer, is right on the money:
Literally, all you need to do: Type in web addresses. Use autofill! Or even: Google the website you want to go to, and go to it. Then bookmark it. Then go back every now and again.On our flight yesterday, my son asked how I was still reading articles on my phone, despite it being in aeroplane mode. I took the opportunity to explain to him how RSS powers feed readers (I use and pay for Feedly) as well as podcasts.
Instead of reading stories that get to you because they’re popular, or just happen to be in your feed at that moment, you’ll read stories that get to you because you chose to go to them. Sounds simple, and insignificant, and almost too easy, right?
This stuff sounds obvious and easy when you’ve grown up with the open web. But given that the big five tech companies seem to be trying to progressively de-skill consumers, we shouldn’t be complacent.
By going to websites as a deliberate reader, you're making a conscious choice about what you want a media outlet to be—as opposed to letting an algorithm choose the thing you're most likely to click on. Or! As opposed to encouraging a world in which everyone is suckered into reading something with a headline optimized by a social media strategist armed with nothing more than "best practices" for conning you into a click.Kamer blames Facebook, and given its impact on the news ecosystem, he's correct in doing so:
Their goal, as a company, is to keep you on Facebook—and away from everything else—as long as they possibly can. They do that by making Facebook as addictive to you as possible. And they make it addictive by feeding you only the exact stripe of content you want to read, which they know to a precise, camel-eye-needle degree. It's the kind of content, say, that you won't just click on, but will "Like," comment on, and share (not just for others to read, but so you can say something about yourself by sharing it, too). And that's often before you've even read it!It's a great read. Why not start by adding Thought Shrapnel's RSS feed to your shiny new feed reader? There's plenty to choose from!
Source: Mashable
Purely technological answers to human problems don't work
In a hugely surprising move, Facebook has found that marking an article as ‘disputed’ on a user’s news feed and putting a red flag next to it makes them want to click on it more. 🙄
The tech giant is doing this in response to academic research it conducted that shows the flags don't work, and they often have the reverse effect of making people want to click even more. Related articles give people more context about what's fake or not, according to Facebook.The important thing is what comes next:
Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg says Facebook is a technology company that doesn't hire journalists. Without using editorial judgement to determine what's real and what's not, tackling fake news will forever be a technology experiment.Until Facebook is forced to admit it's a media comoany, and is regulated as such, we'll continue to have these problems around technological solutionism.
Source: Axios