Category Archives: Micro

Posts that go to to micro.blogs/johnjohnston

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Listened Episode 7: Heather Burns from anchor.fm
In this episode, Konstantinos and Jillian speak with Heather Burns about the Online Safety Bill in the United Kingdom. The Bill, which has been promoted as the one to make the UK the safest place to be online, has received significant criticism about the way it undermines human rights as well as important security protocols. Heather elaborates on these issues as well as why she believes the Online Safety Bill is the UK’s "Internet Brexit" moment, why she has called the bill the "Nick Clegg law" and what she believes the future of the UK will be after the passage of the Bill.

Heather has written extensively on her blog about the UK Online safety bill discussed here. Interesting indeed. Good Glaswegian joke & ends with passionate encouragement of the open web. Very much enjoyed this as I ease back into podcast listening while commuting.

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When we talk about “the algorithm,” we might be conflating recommender systems with online surveillance, monopolization, and the digital platforms’ takeover of all of our leisure time—in other words, with the entire extractive technology industry of the twenty-first century. Bucher told me that the idea of the algorithm is “a proxy for technology, and people’s relationships to the machine.” It has become a metaphor for the ultimate digital Other, a representation of all of our uneasiness with online life.

The Age of Algorithmic Anxiety via John Naughton

Our idea of algorithm is mixed up with other types of manipulation.

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The main issue here is that there it is no longer possible to remove the tracking part of the URL, as Facebook merged it with part of the required web address. Removing the entire construct after the ? would open the main Facebook page of Ghacks Technology News, but it won’t open the linked post.

I don’t read FB but I typically strip any parameters from the urls of tweets. I guess this is the next stage.

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Read: Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth by Wole Soyinka 📚
A huge complicated baggy book. Perhaps reflecting the chaos of reality too much to read smoothly. Sometimes exciting, sometimes amusing & quite often baffling to me. I suspect some knowledge of recent Nigerian politics would help.