onfocus

...the Insurrection was the first time Americans could truly see the radicalizing effects of algorithmic platforms like Facebook and YouTube that other parts of the world, particularly the Global South, had dealt with for years. A moment of political violence Silicon Valley could no longer ignore or obfuscate the way it had with similar incidents in countries like Myanmar, India, Ethiopia, or Brazil. And once faced with the cold, hard truth of what their platforms had been facilitating, companies like Google and Meta, at least internally, accepted that they would never be able to moderate them at scale. And so they just stopped.

This feels very accurate to me. I think it's something we need to acknowledge so we know the hazards of using these monopoly services.

“Simply, we are going to transfer ownership of key Mastodon ecosystem and platform components to a new nonprofit organization,” Mastodon says in a blog post, “affirming the intent that Mastodon should not be owned or controlled by a single individual.”

It’s so important to have other models of organization. We don’t have to live in a world where a few monopolies own the entire social web. Participate with the world you want to see.

Several screenwriters who’ve worked for the streamer told me a common note from company executives is “have this character announce what they’re doing so that viewers who have this program on in the background can follow along.”

Practical art for modern living.

Walmart, John Deere, Tractor Supply and other companies are changing or walking away from diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies. But Costco believes DEI helps its “treasure hunt” shopping atmosphere, and it is standing behind its efforts.

This is the way. Happy to see this.

They’re buying magazines we love, closing their print operations, turning them into digital-only, laying off the actual journalists who made us trust in their content in the first place, and hiring third-party companies to run the affiliate arm of their sites.

Trusted media brands are cashing in on search engine affiliate marketing with thin gruel content.

Apple has agreed to pay $95 million to settle a lawsuit alleging that its voice assistant Siri routinely recorded private conversations that were then shared with third parties and used for targeted ads.

My guess: worth it. They probably made 20x that on advertising. It will have little to no impact on future sales. What are their customers going to do, switch to the OS that takes a screenshot of what you’re doing every five seconds?

But these older profiles are instructive, because they show that Meta’s AI primarily creates the exact type of AI spam that has taken over all of Meta’s platforms recently and which have become a running joke. They also show that Meta is not particularly good at this, and that users do not want this.

Makes sense that instead of protecting their users from garbage AI interactions, Facebook's reaction is to copy and monetize.

As the Coast Guard sped toward the cruise ship, Pam was still on the phone with the Norwegian employee in Miami, begging her to tell the ship to wait. As they approached the looming 14 white decks, she got an update: The captain was refusing their request. They would not be allowed to board.

Turns out the cruise industry is not a customer service industry. This is quite a saga and that last line is really something.

Perhaps Spotify understood the stakes—that when it removed real classical, jazz, and ambient artists from popular playlists and replaced them with low-budget stock muzak, it was steamrolling real music cultures, actual traditions within which artists were trying to make a living.

Spotify has been a huge success at extracting money from artists and making a few people very rich. Platforming hate speech while stealing from artists is them giving the middle finger while doing it. No shame exists for Spotify, only financial consequences of some kind will change how they operate.

The Oregon city of Bend has spent $1,500 (£1,188) on removing googly eyes from seven of the eight sculptures impacted.

Keep Bend googly!

Overall, sheriff patrol officers spend significantly more time on officer-initiated stops – “proactive policing” in law enforcement parlance – than they do responding to community members’ calls for help, according to the report. Research has shown that the practice is a fundamentally ineffective public safety strategy, the report pointed out.

Frustrating that we only ever talk about increasing police manpower and budgets even on the left.

Tommy Cappel, who co-founded the group Beats Antique, says the Archive is “hugely valued in the music community” for its preservation of everything from rare recordings to live sets. “This is important work that deserves to continue for generations to come, and we don’t want to see everything they’ve already done for musicians and our legacy erased,” he added. “Major labels could see all musicians, past and present, as partners — instead of being the bad guy in this dynamic. They should drop their suit. Archives keep us alive.”

Yes, I listen to all my Frank Sinatra through The Great 78 Project rather than buying CDs. It really is the most convenient way to listen to music despite the pops and scratches of digitization process. « This is sarcasm. And this lawsuit is more out-of-control copyright enforcement. We need the Internet Archive.