The Decline of Twitter
| |

The Decline of Twitter

Twitter is alive and healthy, with vibrant communities and an opportunity to converse with people and find information that mainstream media are sometimes slow to report on. Over the last week that balance is swinging towards less positive times.


In Europe, freedom of speech, and freedom of expression require people to say things that they can back up with evidence and facts. If you say something that is demonstrably false, or demonstrably misleading then you are held to account for this.


In the US they believe that freedom of expression includes the freedom to lie with impunity, to spread disinformation and to mislead people, without consequences. By doing this society is vulnerable to tyranny and fascism. If we are told a lie that we want to believe then we are less likely to quibble its veracity. We will repeat the lie, and if we see people who enjoy the same lie, then we will repeat that they have told the same lie. Disinformation is a positive feedback loop of false information being spread as real information, once it gains enough traction.



By buying Twitter, and by saying that Twitter wants to bring freedom of speech, and freedom of expression Musk is saying something that we all value and think is important. The problem though, as I have mentioned above, is that the freedom of expression that Musk is talking about, is not a European freedom, but an American one. It is suspected that he would bring back people like Trump, and that he would make twitter a welcoming place for people to spread lies and disinformation, in impunity.


There is another larger scope to this conversation and that scope is that Twitter is a global social network used by over a billion people a day. During this pandemic it has allowed people who want to find information about the risks presented by Covid-19 to follow experts in their fields, to hear accounts from sufferers of Long Covid, and to get a global appreciation of the risks of the disease. When the WHO backs up what the experts have shared on twitter, and vice versa, when the information makes sense to our moral compass, then Twitter is a great resource for information. It should be protected. It should not be possible for one individual to buy a network with over a billion users.


“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,”

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/25/technology/musk-twitter-sale.html


There are plenty of ways in which people can be proponents of free speech. They can invest in education, they can invest in newspapers, they can invest in library projects and more. They can invest in making sure that people are granted free and equal access to information. You don’t need to buy a social network to promote free speech. Remember that freedom of expression comes with the obligation to be well-informed, and knowledgeable. His “freedom” is to spread rumours and opinions. These undermine, rather than help democracy. I believe that he wants dismantle the gatekeepers, so that it is even more challenging for people to have access to trustworthy information.


On Monday, he tweeted that he hoped his worst critics would remain on Twitter, because “that is what free speech means.” He added in his statement that he hoped to increase trust by making Twitter’s technology more transparent, defeating the bots that spam people on the platform and “authenticating all humans.”

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/25/technology/musk-twitter-sale.html


When Google bought Jaiku, and when Facebook bought Instagram we stayed on the networks. Jaiku eventually became Google+ but Google+ was then dumped. Instagram, after being bought by Facebook lost its soul. Instead of being a network of friends, and friends of friends it became a network of adverts and influencers. I dumped the network because I no longer derived pleasure from the network.


Now onto Twitter. Musk “… tweeted that he hoped his worst critics would remain on twitter because ‘that is what free speech means.'”. Free speech isn’t about whether we stay on a platform or leave. It is about the freedom to be on a network that is not owned by someone we do not trust. It is about being on a network that is not owned by a temperamental individual. It is about being on a platform we trust, with values we cherish. I do not value the US values of “free speech”, I value the European ones, that include accountability. Remember the first line of the New York times’ article is “The world’s richest man succeeded in a bid to acquire the influential social networking service, which he has said he wants to take private.”


Anyone valuing democracy should be worried by that sentence. Within the article they say that Twitter has 220 million daily users. He would take the conversation of 220 million people, and control the network they use, privately. This should not be possible.


Mr. Musk has made some of his intentions clear in regulatory filings, tweets and public appearances: The company must scrap nearly all of its moderation policies, which ban content like violent threats, harassment and spam. It must provide more transparency about the algorithm it uses to boost tweets in users’ newsfeeds. And it must become a private company.

source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/25/technology/twitter-employees-elon-musk.html


I will finally leave you with the quote above. Do you want to be on a social network without moderation? I do not. That’s why I don’t use other platforms. I am ready to leave twitter, when the time comes. I have been ready to do so for years.

Twitter: The Rise of the Personal Question That Isn’t

Recently I have noticed individuals tweeting as if they were people, asking questions and getting 120 or more comments. They ask a question like “What was your first OS” or “What is your current setup” or other questions. These are generic questions that everyone has an answer to, so everyone answers to them. Those answering think either that they will get a personal answer back, or that they will increase their visibility by answering to these questions where no one cares about the answer, except marketers.


These questions are simple, and brilliant in their deceptiveness. They give the illusion of a personal question, but require no timeline reading, no investment of time or attention. Just broadcast a generic question, and wait for answers.


When I see that a tweet has three hundred answers I usually don’t bother to answer. I look for one on one conversations that may expand to four or five people, but no more. I have no interest in listening to a crowd that does not listen back, and by listen I mean read tweets.


I come from the age of chatrooms and web forums, an age where we were part of communities where everyone knew our name. I come from the Cheers age of the web. “Hello everyone”, “Hey norm”. An age where presence and time meant visibility, rather than algorithm seduction.


The accounts that I start to see more and more, are just noise. They don’t give me a reason to spend hours on the web. They give me a desire to do something else.


This morning I did do something else. Clothes washing, looking at kindles and learning about what service workers can do, by a four year old course that seems out of date. It wasn’t part of learning path I would have dumped it and moved on. I find it hard to watch courses where I can’t get practical experience. I will find relevant information to put the theory I am learning, into practice.


And that’s it for today.

Become A JavaScript Developer Completed and GeoJSON

Become A JavaScript Developer Completed and GeoJSON

We’re in a pandemic, and it makes sense to invest time in learning. I completed the Become a JavaScript Developer course last night and today I played around with some code to see if it worked for what I wanted. It didn’t. I also listened to a live stream which discussed geojson, smapshot and other projects. I like the idea of geotagged data, and an open API to allow for the data to be shared more easily


I could see this as especially useful for climbing, hiking, archeology and other activities. This reminds me of photosynth, mixed in with photogrammetry and other technologies. When images are taken they are geo-tagged but another layer is added, by detecting the angle the picture was taken at. Whether it was looking down, up or in another direction. In other words in three, rather than two dimensions. This is great for modelling, but also for helping people get a sense of the images that they’re looking at. Climbing pictures, where we can see the upward or downward angle would be interesting.


It would also be fun to write a blog post, find the api information, and include that within a geojson file, to provide location info, angle, and other data. This data could then be ported from a photo app, to a hiking app, to a website and more. With more images 3d models become possible. Imagine gathering Via ferrata images and documenting the route.


Of course they can also use this for mapping glacier progress, or regression, coastal erosion and a multitude of other topics. I found this talk really interesting, and I see plenty of uses for such data.

High Winds And A Skipped Walk

High Winds And A Skipped Walk

There is a cold wind blowing today so I skipped my daily walk. I can dress for the weather and I am usually fine. Today I simply decided to miss my daily walk. I believe that walking whatever the weather, whatever the wind, and whatever the precipitation is good. I also believe that it fatigues us. For this reason it makes sense, sometimes, to stay indoors, and focus on studying or spending money on things we don’t need.


Early Sunsets


One of the problems with winter, aside from cold weather and finding a valid excuse is short days. When days are short you spend daylight working towards your goals, and by the time you’re free to go out the sun has set. It sets at 1720 at the moment so a one and a half hour walk requires going at three in the afternoon at the latest. Today I missed the window of opportunity.


Studies


I finished a course on closures in JavaScript today and I played around with creating a function to convert from knots to kilometres an hour. The first version was simple and had no interactivity but the second version, by copying someone else’s code works. I always make sure to credit the source from which I am learning. The next topic will be JavaScript Classes.


Android and iOS


I revived my android phone and tried Google Pay and it works very well but then tried Android car play or whatever it is called and that worked badly. In fact it didn’t work, so I feel that unless I swap the car, or go for what could be an expensive car os upgrade I might as well stick with Apple despite not being enthused with the platform at the moment. I wish switching the two could be as easy as a dual boot computer or laptop. Choose one, or the other, and everything is smooth. Unfortunately you need to commit to one or the other.


Playing With Tweetdeck


Recently I grew tired of seeing tweets that fill the entire screen. Twitter is meant to be a microblogging platform, not FaceBook. One way to avoid seeing tweets that fill the entire screen is to use Tweetdeck.twitter.com. It allows you to see as many lists and columns as you want. You can use the number keys to change between views. I believe that the decision to design for mobile first is a mistake, in the current web landscape, but is worth exploring in another blog post.



The Negative Impact of Social Networks on The Mental Health of Girls

In today’s Le Matin, which was then mentioned by the RTS they discuss the impact of the pandemic of girls. When I first read this I was unclear as to whether they mean women or girls. It is about girls. The article speaks about how boys can play computer games and compete and in general to win, whereas girls go to social networks and compare themselves to their peers and other girls. As a result of this they end up needing psychological help.



This is relevant to my blog because for decades I have argued that social media should be a place for conversations and friendships. Websites such as Facebook, Instagram and apps like TikTok encourage women, not to converse, but to be beautiful, be better coordinated than others, imitate, use filters and more. Women are encouraged to be superficially beautiful rather than to converse, interact and establish something meaningful.


Look at Instagram. Many girls, and women post self-portraits, copy trends and do such things. Their presence is axed towards being appealing, talented and more.


This isn’t good. Websites like Instagram used to be networks of friends sharing with direct friends, Facebook was about sharing with uni friends, and Twitter was a place where we could converse, with people that those we followed were conversing with. Every network was about networks of trust and friendships.


Today, with algorithms, memes, trends and more, via TikTok, Instagram and Facebook the friendship aspect is gone, to focus on influencers, making money, and being part of trends. The individual has been lost in a sea of conformity. It is for this reason that girls would be struggling during the pandemic.


As a single person I can’t stand Facebook, Instagram, or even TikTok, and I am an adult with a clearly defined identity, in theory. TikTok, Facebook and Instagram are designed in such a way that genuine friendships and conversations are hard or impossible, so it is easy to fall into a positive feedback loop where we feel worse and worse about our lives.


It doesn’t need to be that way. If social networks allowed for personal connections to form, showed networks of friends of friends, rather than strangers, then social media would stop being about the superficial, and return to being about the genuine.


That’s why I can still stand Twitter, and WordPress. Both are about human to human connections. Both are healthy.

A Distinct Change In Pandemic Attitude – Pandemic Travel

A Distinct Change In Pandemic Attitude – Pandemic Travel

I am against travel during a pandemic. I am against venturing further than a two hour walk. To be more accurate I was against these things until the vaccines. My attitude since then has changed because of the indifference and incompetence governments have shown. Instead of having a primary and a backup safety measure they have gone for a primary, with no backup solution.


Switzerland and other nations behaved as if vaccinations, by themselves, without masks, without social distancing, without any other mitigating measures, were enough. Now we’re in the fifth wave and all age groups are vulnerable, from young children to older people. The entire social column is at risk at the moment.


Someone used the refrain “but some people can’t self isolate, they have a family, they have children, they have work, and other excuses. We are in a pandemic. People should be giving reasons for why they want to be safe, rather than make excuses for doing something that is unsafe, from meeting friends for fun, in a bar, without masks, to sitting on a train and eating crisps, to going for a walk without observing the recommended safety distance.


Two or so decades ago people spoke of six degrees of separation and networks. They spoke of 1st, 2nd and third degree connections. A pandemic benefits from people with plenty of social connections. If we are all walking alone then the virus would have to be exceptional to leap from one individual to another. In contrast, if people take trains, sit in cafés etc then the virus will have an easy time to jump from person A to group B and from group B to C, E and it will escalate.


Now that winter is back, and that people socialise indoors the virus is converging from group to group with ease. People are so busy making excuses as to why this group of people have no choice, that group has choice, and this profession has no choice, that the safety measures that were in place have disintegrated. In the process of excusing each other for not respecting masks, social distance, and waning vaccine effectiveness barriers are no longer in place. That’s why we have rapid increases in the number of cases.


Defeatism is making the pandemic flare up at moments, and is preventing it from being eradicated. Without defeatism the pandemic could have been over last August.


The reason I have changed my mind about travel during a pandemic, is that at the current rate it will take years for the pandemic to end. If people are actively trying to stop the spread of the virus, if they are holding each other accountable, then it makes sense to forego certain freedoms. In the current situation the opposite is true. Passionate self-isolation, masking and vaccination boosters make sense, but staying within two hours of home doesn’t.


I am not speaking of going to bars, meeting big groups, or taking over absurd risks, I am speaking about walking in open spaces that are slightly different, of seeing another landscape, and of going to a zone with a lower risk of contamination.


Imagine if Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett created a character named Pandemic, or Covid-19. We will see if a surrealist creates such a character.

Zero Minutes Per Week on Facebook

Zero Minutes Per Week on Facebook

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.


Irrelevant Content from Algorithms


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.


Questionable Morals


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.


FOMO and trolling


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.


Not A Social Media Detox


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


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.


Very Few Interactions


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.


A Lifestyle, Not An Addiction


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.


On Learning to Mark Unfinished Books as Read

On Learning to Mark Unfinished Books as Read

Over the last three or four days I have marked two books as finished despite not finishing for a simple reason. I have plenty of books on Kindle, Audible and Kobo that I need to read, but that to read all these books, would take time. I started to read one book and I stopped within pages, every time for the same reason.


In today’s context my disgust with one book is rational. For decades the web and social media have been treated as addictions, and because they have been stigmatised and seen as illnesses it becomes morally acceptable to abuse users. Look at Meta Facebook and Meta Instagram, and how they are being discussed in the news. The attitude, that social media is a drug enabled marketers, and social media owners to abuse of their addicted users, because they’re addicts, and it is their fault for becoming addicted.


That book that was written years in the past, illustrates why I was bothered by the framing of the discussion at the time, and we see the repercussions of that attitude a decade on. Words, and attitudes, matter. Social media should be treated as a means of communicating like any other. Genuine interactions between people should be encouraged. Instead the opposite is true. Four years ago I was using my real name, and meeting people in person, from social media. Today I am anonymous, because I do not trust the social media landscape that has resulted from being given over to marketers, algorithms, and groups that manufacture consent.


And now to the second book. The second book I gave up on is about someone thru hiking during the pandemic last year, and for the first few chapters I found the book, mediocre, but I continued reading it. I stopped reading it when I saw the political bias.


What I wanted, when I started reading a book about hiking during a pandemic, was to read about how the person gathered what information they could, about the virus, from reliable, not opinionated sources, for example the World Health Organisation, medical groups and more. I would have found it interesting if the person had discussed masks, doubts about continuing and striving to find reliable information.


The Beauty of Kindle Unlimited, Audible and Libraries


If we had to read and finish every book we borrowed or bought then we would be paralised by fear, and we may start reading a book, dislike it, and give up on reading forever. Thanks to libraries. Kindle Unlimited and Audible we can take as many books as we want, within reasonable limits, begin to read, and when our interests shift, start reading something else, and then something else.


We see television, film, music and other pursuits as though we can consume several programs a day. The same is true of podcasts. For some reason we live under the illusion that we must read one book at a time, but that is a false assumption. Look at schools at universities. We do not study one topic at a time. We study several in paralel. The same should be true of how we read.


We should start reading a book about topic a, and after a while start reading about topic b, before continuing with topic E. Books can, and should be read in paralel because by reading books in paralel the knowledge we gain from one book complements the knowledge we gain from another book.


I find that when I read fiction I can read through books at a quick pace, but that when I read factual books I sometimes need to read them over a period of months, or even years. They are filled with information, and sometimes that information is digestible in small parts, rather than all at once. If we read the entire book at once, we will remember less, than over time.


Now back to the core. When I lived in London I used to love spending hours in Waterstone’s looking at the bookshelves and I dreamt of having thousands of francs/pounds to spend on books but I didn’t. In university I used to love going to the library and pick up documentaries, and books, and watch them, or skim through the books. To buy every book that peaks our curiousity is expensive, so we feel that we should read and finish every book. If we can walk from village to village, and look for books that wake our curiousity, then that is great. If we were not in the middle of a pandemic then I would have picked up and started reading those books immediately, but as we can’t be as relaxed about handling books I prefer to read them on a sittee, than in bed.


If I had known about all these lending libraries then I would have taken books and dropped them off, years ago. I intend to put these books back in circulation. I could read them, take notes, and write blog posts about them, and conclude with where I dropped off the book, for the next reader.


In Borex they have something like that. Fnac, and the Borex lending library have “coup de coeur”, where people can leave a note about why they loved a book, and why others should read it. I could review books that I acquire via lending libraries.


It would benefit writers, readers and villages, with an afflux of “book tourists.” 😉

On the Detrimental impact of Chain Letters on Social Networks
|

On the Detrimental impact of Chain Letters on Social Networks

In the 90s, people found it fun to share chain letters. At the time, this was something new to many of us, so we found them fun. We received and then passed them on, but over the volume of chain letters become a torrent of spam. The letter is fun the first time you see it. If twenty people forwarded it to 20 more, then we’re speaking about four hundred e-mails. We’re speaking about thousands of letters that have no productive effect on society.


After a while people grew bored with chain letters, so they blocked them, or they told off the people sending those messages. In 2007 or so, when Facebook was still young and moral people started to share chain letters through this network, and at first they’re fun, and we fill them in, and we share that info with friends, and we look forward to them doing the same.


There are two issues with chain letters. The first of these is privacy. By filling in and sharing chain letters, we are providing a lot of personal information that we may not want others to know about us. Polls and other tools were used to gather information to influence elections in a variety of countries.


The second reason for which chain letters are unpleasant is that they produce noise. Social networks easily become very noisy, and it takes constant care and attention to ensure that they do not become too noisy. If you tolerate chain letters once, be assured that you will get twenty more within a few weeks. If you put a stop to them immediately, then you avoid noise.


My reason for using social media is to establish direct connections with individuals, not to fill in silly chain letters. I want to have an exchange of questions of answers. Without questions and answers, I could be reading a book, or a blog. If I devote time to being “as live” I want to interact as if we were conversing.


“If it’s not hurting anyone, then don’t comment on someone else’s conversation.” In the grand scheme of things I used a retweet, which means that I was speaking to my own community, not that person’s. Second, chain letters do harm someone. Me. Social media is not my toilet break from family life. Twitter is my family life, especially during a pandemic.


My message is simple. Don’t spam twitter or other social networks with chain letters. It may look harmless, but it isn’t.

| |

Video Editing And Social Media

In the past if you wanted to be a video editor you also needed to be a camera operator, and to be a camera operator you needed to be a video editor. By knowing both skills you shot good material because you knew how hard bad material was to use. As a result of this videos were worth watching with all of our attention.


In recent years, there has been a move towards multimedia editing, where you don’t expect people to watch the video while sitting in front of a TV. You expect them to be looking at a mobile phone while commuting, or scrolling through a social media feed. Job offers reflect this. You often see jobs that required perfect spelling and grammar, Adobe Premiere and Adobe After Effects. The need for an editor to be a camera operator is gone. We have gone from videos being made by camera operators and video editors who love their medium, to graphists, who overlay graphics over video. They’re making slideshows, rather than video content.


Today I started to watch a video about desertification and the graphics were so huge and prominent that I lost interest after just two shots. They are not using video appropriately. Videos should not be optimised for social media. They should be made interesting to view.


I spend hours a week watching videos on YouTube where the use of graphics is minimal or even non-existent. I watch hiking and camping documentaries that are half an hour to an hour long with minimal music and minimal graphics.


For a long time, there was the notion that content should be 1 to three minutes long for people to watch the entire thing. I think that this view is now wrong. I believe that with the coming of age of YouTube content creators, so the desire for longer form content has grown.


Tik Tok and User Generated Spam


For a while I really liked TikTok during this pandemic and then I fell out of love with it for two reasons. The first of these reasons is that it forces you onto the For You Page so you end up watching and following strangers, whom you will never interact with and the second is that everyone uses the same song, does the same action, but in their own individual way. This could be seen as fun, and many do, but for me this is User Generated Spam.


Over a decade ago we had Qik, We had Seesmic, we had Livestation and plenty of other video sharing apps, some of them live, others pre-recorded, and others for multi-camera streaming. TikTok had great potential to be a Seesmic style channel. We could have logged in, recorded a video, and had someone comment or respond. It could have been a way of conversing people with our voices. Instead, it is a talent show. There is little to no engagement. We don’t talk. We don’t get to know others. Furthermore, we’re just eyeballs looking at mediocre content, when we could do something more interesting.


I considered unfollowing plenty of accounts, but this takes time. I also considered that I could follow accounts that create original content. Paradoxically, TikTok gave me just the video to illustrate the point I am making. 😉


@bmcdiving

Been a Long Week Of Diving In This Beautiful WasteWater ??? #commercialdiving #underwaterwelder #wastewater #shitjob #livingthedream

? Astronaut In The Ocean – Masked Wolf