Not everyone is happy living in the real world.
An advert for Air New Zealand, Boeing 777-300, Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, horse riding, New Zealand’s landscape, the three or four passenger classes and of course bungee jumping.
I noticed that Facebook has a way of letting you know how badly you are addicted to their website. In the process I learned that I spent zero minutes on their website this week, and one minute last week. I do not spend time on their website because it fails to provide me with a community that I want to interact with on a daily basis. There are a number of reasons for this but the key reason is that they spent so much effort trying to make the timeline more addictive that they made it repulsive.
The timeline is repulsive because it shows too many adverts, whether for groups, for products, for promoted posts and more. These are irrelevant, and if shown at too high a rate they become toxic. They also stop you from seeing the content that you want to engage with, i.e. posts by friends. Facebook has become a network of strangers talking to strangers, and noise. We see others, but we are not seen. If that is toxic to me, imagine the impact on others. Instagram, too, has this flaw.
The second reason is to do with Facebook’s reputation for enabling, or at least not removing extremist content for months or even seasons. They sometimes seem to remove it once it is no longer needed, rather than when it causes the most damage.
The two strongest push factors were FOMO and trolling. Facebook had a way of reminding us that not everyone is self isolating during this pandemic, or of reminding us that not everyone is in solitude. When you are not conversing with people, you are only seeing an idealised representation of their lives, then you begin to feel down about your own life. It makes you wish the pandemic would end, so that you could resume socialising, meeting people, and maybe even having something, other than social media, to come home to.
The second one was virulent trolling. In normal times you would put up with communities where you are being trolled because you can still plan activities in the physical world. During a pandemic however, if you get trolled you have no reason to put up with it, and a survival strategy is to leave the community. Eventually I took a serious break from twitter that has lasted for almost the entire pandemic.
What I am writing about is not a social media detox. My aim is not to take a break from social media. My aim was to take a break from, and cut ties with a community that is toxic, both through the ways it pushes rubbish into your timelines, but also by the toxic people that interact on the platform. When you are flamed twice within the space of days, and when you are tired of scrolling through irrelevant content, you eventually decide that the Return on Investment, ROI, as a user, is less than it is worth to keep using a service.
I have had the same realisation with Instagram, which is part of the same problematic social network. Meta. Everything Meta touches, becomes unhealthy for users to use, and now they want to go into the metaverse. I will not use AR and VR via such a company. They do not have the required moral standards for me to trust them with something immersive.
One of the drawbacks to dumping Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and other products, is that you become disconnected from the social networks that have the biggest monopoly. If you do not use these networks you are socially excluded. Too many products are built off of Facebook’s user login system now. You lose access to some apps, web services, and to some communities. During a pandemic this contributes to the sense of isolation.
I don’t miss either Facebook or Instagram because they stopped being about a network of friends years ago. They became more and more of a waste of time, and more of a way to see how I wish my life was different. That would be positive, if we were all on the same life path, but we are not, especially during the pandemic. The standard model life that we saw on Facebook and Instagram stopped being real. It became an unhealthy illusion. It also led to a sense of isolation. That sense of isolation is why a Facebook and Instagram break was needed. You don’t long for a different life every day. You can more easily live in the moment.
One thing that hurt, when I used Facebook, but also Instagram, was seeing other people get twenty or more likes, and getting conversations started via their content. Seeing that I was being ignored was painful, but it also led me to another thought. If I am being ignored on FB and IG, where I am giving them my attention, and content for free, then I might as well give over that time to my blog, and at least this way I achieve something positive. It gets very little attention, but it is “me time” as you would see many people say. It is time that I devote to thinking, and writing. In effect I am practicing mindfulness.
For years I have argued that social media and social networks should be about a lifestyle rather than an addiction. Google and Twitter, although flawed, in some ways, do not treat us like addicts. They treat us like individuals, and the same is true of Wordpress.com. We are a community of writers and commenters, who write, and occassionally people read what we have written. Sometimes they even comment. The goal isn’t to have a conversation. The aim is to read about someone else’s experiences. The web should be a healthy place, to talk online, while waiting for another opportunity to meet offline, as it was in 2006-2007.
Today was a different to recent days because we spent it within the clouds, rather than beneath, or above them. It is hard to be above the clouds when you are near lake level. SRF has two nice time lapses of clouds flowing over a mountain as if it was water, or dry ice. Choose the one you prefer.
It is estimated that a tenth of the Swiss population could be sick with covid-19 at the moment. If a tenth of those people had long covid then Switzerland is faced with 87,000 people with long Covid.
“Environ une personne sur dix a contracté le Covid ces dernières semaines en Suisse, a dit Urs Karrer, vice-président de la task force scientifique de la Confédération devant la presse à Berne. Les nouvelles infections se concentrent actuellement surtout chez les enfants de moins de 10 ans.
One million one hundred thousand cases of Covid have been detected in Switzerland, out of a population of around eight point seven million. In theory that’s an eighth of Switzerland that has fallen sick, if we ignore second and third infections of the virus.
There are two challenges to face. The first of these is to see whether we can get through the current wave without being infected, and that’s unlikely for parents of children and people who are exposed to others. The second challenge, it to see how much longer this pandemic will last. At the moment, with the speed at which new variants arrive. Three, within a matter of weeks, it looks as though new variants will emerge faster than vaccines and as if we will have many more waves.
Some countries stand out by the way in which they are not trying to make things better.
I am still studying and learning. I will continue to study for as long as the pandemic lasts, because it is the one thing that is guaranteed not to be taken away from me. It also provides me with a sense of accomplishment every day.
Flickr had a mobile website that worked well because it was developed for all mobile devices. As a result I was getting into the habit of taking pictures, amending the title and adding comments whilst on the move.
Recently though, the mobile developers at Flickr decided to do what every narrow minded developer of mobile websites likes to do. Develop something for the iphone and ipod touch. This is theoreticaly a great idea but in practice it’s a nightmare for anyone using a normal phone. it’s a nightmare because all of the mobile functionality of websites disappears. As a result of this the website is all but unusable. And no I’m not going to get an iphone.
It’s a shame that the mobile web developing community are doing this more and more. I hope that flickr will do their best to rectify this most annoying of situations.
What makes the situation in Cairo so interesting is the number of media outlets that you can use as sources. From 24 hour news channels like France 24, Al Jazeera, BBC World and others to individual people with mobile phones. For France 24 you have three languages to chose from, with Al Jazeera to you have three languages to chose from. With Sky News you have the choice between Standard definition and High definition.
You have live cameras looking into the square. There is no lag time between the acquisition and distribution of images. There is the challenge of aquiring images from the ground though. Journalists have been attacked, as reported on twitter, and through interviews once they arrive in their home countries.
Tweets have told us of arrests of certain individuals, of attacks on certain media offices etc. It means that whilst those within the country may not have access to this information we on the outside see it.
One of the aspects that is so interesting is the way in which people have been able to organise themselves. Facebook, twitter and other social websites have been important, like Bambuser and flickr. Mainstream as well.
I am looking forward to the literature that will come out from this event, especially if it successful. Imagine comparing a situation like that of Tomas in “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” to this situation, especially if the end result is greater freedom.
IBC is a big show. There are a lot of things to see. Some of those are fun and innovative whilst others are less interesting. I’ve noticed that there are quite a few companies showing mobile and IPTV solutions. Many of them are multiplatform, web tv, mobile and other. they work on a variety of codecs.
Anothr aspect is the virtual studio and automated processes. We see many remote camera rigs, remote jibs, remote 3d modeling cameras and to some extent virtual modelling and sets before any of the shooting is ever done. In reality it’s abou he one man operation. One camera operator to program, one person to control multiple camers and more. It’s also about high definition and 3d.
There were quite a few examples and solutions attempting to allow for 3D productions, from two small cameras fitted on a rig to allow for shooting as if it was two eyes to more expensive rigs where you’d see two cameras, one pointing down and shooting through a mirror with another shooting straight forward. Of course there are also the monitors that can play in 3D. Several stands had demonstrations and implementations of this technology.
After this we have the importance of asset managment. Many companies were working at offering solutions for newsrooms, video archives and more. That’s because of the amount of content that content aggregators are now having to contend with. It’s an interesting time. i learned quite a bit on this topic.
There are many more details to be discussed but those are some of the key points I have noticed at this particular IBC. More articles will come soon.
This is a response to a post on Segala: Scoble opens up debate about walled gardens after being booted by Facebook.
There are two key factors to take into account. The first of these is the issue of privacy and the second is the free flow of information.
Unlike most other sites facebook is both hated and detested by different groups of users. As a recent university graduate and member of the international community it’s a great way to keep up with what my friends are doing without having to make hundreds of five second phone calls.
The second aspect has to do with Openness. Facebook was started as a forum based on one campus in one university but due to it’s popularity expanded further. As a result it became a national and then international sensation. That’s whilst still a student based website.
This is where the issue of privacy plays a key role. If we are to trust this website then it must make sure to do everything within it’s power to stop information collected. That includes e-mail and phone numbers,
What you display is your choice and your friends can do what they want with that information, within the limiations set forth by facebook.
That’s where trust comes in. Without trust Facebook will dissapear much faster than any network because people give real names, real relationships and real addresses. Identity theft would be a disaster.
Now how does this all fit in with Robert Scoble?
He’s got over five thousand facebook friends. If he decides to collect all the details we’ve offered up to facebook then both Robert Scoble and Facebook will suffer. Scoble for a breach of trust. Facebook for the same.
Now what good has come of this so far? We’ve seen that they take privacy very seriously. So seriously that they’re ready to get a storm of criticism for banning one of it’s best known members (within the geek community).
I actually feel far more secure in how Facebook deals with my information now that this has come to light. I think that if facebook bring this point to light they are going to gain a great amount of credibility.