marketing
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We Need Whole News
Journalism is in trouble because journals are going away. So are broadcasters that do journalism rather than opinionism.* Basically, they are either drowning in digital muck or adapting to it—and many have. Also in that muck are a zillion new journalists, born native to digital life. Those zillions include everybody with something to say, for… Continue reading
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The most important standard in development today
It’s P7012: Standard for Machine Readable Personal Privacy Terms, which “identifies/addresses the manner in which personal privacy terms are proffered and how they can be read and agreed to by machines.” P7012 is being developed by a working group of the IEEE. Founded in 1963, the IEEE is the largest association of technical professionals in the world… Continue reading
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Just in case you feel safe with Twitter
Just got a press release by email from David Rosen (@firstpersonpol) of the Public Citizen press office. The headline says “Historic Grindr Fine Shows Need for FTC Enforcement Action.” The same release is also a post in the news section of the Public Citizen website. This is it: WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Norwegian Data Protection Agency today fined Grindr $11.7 million following… Continue reading
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Time for advertising to call off the dogs
Digital advertising needs to sniff its own stench, instead of everybody’s digital butts. A sample of that stench is wafting through the interwebs from the Partnership for Responsible Addressable Media, an ad industry bullphemism for yet another way to excuse the urge to keep tracking people against their wishes (and simple good manners) all over the… Continue reading
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So far, privacy isn’t a debate
Remember the dot com boom? Doesn’t matter if you don’t. What does matter is that it ended. All business manias do. That’s why we can expect the “platform economy” and “surveillance capitalism” to end. Sure, it’s hard to imagine that when we’re in the midst of the mania, but the end will come. When it… Continue reading
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Zoom’s new privacy policy
Yesterday (March 29), Zoom updated its privacy policy with a major rewrite. The new language is far more clear than what it replaced, and which had caused the concerns I detailed in my previous three posts: Zoom needs to clean up its privacy act, More on Zoom and privacy, and Helping Zoom Those concerns were shared… Continue reading
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Helping Zoom
[This is the third of four posts. The last of those, Zoom’s new privacy policy, visits the company’s positive response to input such as mine here. So you might want to start with that post (because it’s the latest) and look at the other three, including this one, after that.] I really don’t want to… Continue reading
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Do you really need all this personal information, @RollingStone?
Here’s the popover that greets visitors on arrival at Rolling Stone‘s website: Our Privacy Policy has been revised as of January 1, 2020. This policy outlines how we use your information. By using our site and products, you are agreeing to the policy. That policy is supplied by Rolling Stone’s parent (PMC) and weighs more than 10,000 words. In… Continue reading
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The Spinner’s hack on journalism
The Spinner* (with the asterisk) is “a service that enables you to subconsciously influence a specific person, by controlling the content on the websites he or she usually visits.” Meaning you can hire The Spinner* to hack another person. It works like this: You pay The Spinner* $29. For example, to urge a friend to… Continue reading
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On renting cars
I came up with that law in the last millennium and it applied until Chevy discontinued the Cavalier in 2005. Now it should say, “You’re going to get whatever they’ve got.” The difference is that every car rental agency in days of yore tended to get their cars from a single car maker, and now… Continue reading
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We can do better than selling our data
If personal data is actually a commodity, can you buy some from another person, as if that person were a fruit stand? Would you want to? Not yet. Or maybe not really. Either way, that’s the idea behind the urge by some lately to claim personal data as personal property, and then to make money (in… Continue reading
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For privacy we need tech more than policy
To get real privacy in the online world, we need to get the tech horse in front of the policy cart. So far we haven’t done that. Let me explain… Nature and the Internet both came without privacy. The difference is that we’ve invented privacy tech in the natural world, starting with clothing and shelter,… Continue reading
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Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica problems are nothing compared to what’s coming for all of online publishing
Let’s start with Facebook’s Surveillance Machine, by Zeynep Tufekci in last Monday’s New York Times. Among other things (all correct), Zeynep explains that “Facebook makes money, in other words, by profiling us and then selling our attention to advertisers, political actors and others. These are Facebook’s true customers, whom it works hard to please.” Irony… Continue reading
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A Qualified Fail
Power of the People is a great grabber of a headline, at least for me. But it’s a pitch for a report that requires filling out the form here on the right: You see a lot of these: invitations to put one’s digital ass on mailing list, just to get a report that should have… Continue reading
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Mics Matter
Sometimes you get what you pay for. In this case, a good microphone in a bluetooth headset. Specifically, the Bose Soundsport Wireless: I’ve had these a day so far, and I love them. But not just because they sound good. Lots of earphones do that. I love them because the mic in the thing is… Continue reading
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The real problem is Decoy News (and decoy content of all kinds)—and the platforms can’t fix it
The term “fake news” was a casual phrase until it became clear to news media that a flood of it had been deployed during last year’s presidential election in the U.S. Starting in November 2016, fake news was the subject of strong and well-researched coverage by NPR (here and here), Buzzfeed, CBS (here and here),… Continue reading
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Data is the New Love
Personal data, that is. Because it’s good to give away—but only if you mean it. And it’s bad to take it, even it seems to be there for the taking. I bring this up because a quarter million pages (so far) on the Web say “data is the new oil.” That’s because a massive personal data… Continue reading