Last week I was in Portland for IndieWeb Summit. This was only my second IndieWeb conference (the first was IndieWebCamp in Austin). I had a great time in Portland and got even more than I expected out of IndieWeb Summit. The first day was short keynotes and sessions led by attendees on a range of t...
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👓 Why 2016 Was the Year of the Algorithmic Timeline | Motherboard
2016 was the year that the likes of Instagram and Twitter decided they knew better than you what content you wanted to see in your feeds.
use algorithms to decide on what individual users most wanted to see. Depending on our friendships and actions, the system might deliver old news, biased news, or news which had already been disproven.
2016 was the year of politicians telling us what we should believe, but it was also the year of machines telling us what we should want.
The only way to insure your posts gain notice is to bombard the feed and hope that some stick, which risks comprising on quality and annoying people.
Sreekumar added: “Interestingly enough, the change was made after Instagram opened the doors to brands to run ads.” But even once they pay for visibility, a brand under pressure to remain engaging: “Playing devil’s advocate for a second here: All the money in the world cannot transform shitty content into good content.”
Artificially limiting reach of large accounts to then turn around and demand extortion money? It’s the social media mafia!
It disorients the reader, and distracts them with endless, timeless content.
👓 A Close Look at How Facebook’s Retreat From the News Has Hurt One Particular Website—Ours | Slate
New data shows the impact of Facebook’s pullback from an industry it had dominated (and distorted).
(Roose, who has since deleted his tweet as part of a routine purge of tweets older than 30 days, told me it was intended simply as an observation, not a full analysis of the trends.)
Another example of someone regularly deleting their tweets at regular intervals. I’ve seem a few examples of this in academia.
It’s worth noting that there’s a difference between NewsWhip’s engagement stats, which are public, and referrals—that is, people actually clicking on stories and visiting publishers’ sites. The two have generally correlated, historically, and Facebook told me that its own data suggests that continues to be the case. But two social media professionals interviewed for this story, including one who consults for a number of different publications, told me that the engagement on Facebook posts has led to less relative traffic. This means publications could theoretically be seeing less ad revenue from Facebook even if their public engagement stats are holding steady.
From Slate’s perspective, a comment on a Slate story you see on Facebook is great, but it does nothing for the site’s bottom line.
(Remember when every news site published the piece, “What Time Is the Super Bowl?”)
This is a great instance for Google’s box that simply provides the factual answer instead of requiring a click through.
fickle audiences available on social platforms.
Here’s where feed readers without algorithms could provide more stability for news.
👓 How Facebook Punked and then Gut Punched the News Biz | TPM
In the digital publishing world, there’s been a buzz about this article in Slate in which slate staffer Will Oremus detailed the impact on the publication of Facebook’s dramatic retreat from the news business. The numbers are stark but not surprising for people in the industry. Indeed, Oremus makes the point that most news organizations are not willing to release these numbers. (We’ll come back to that point in a moment.) In January 2017 Slate had 28.33 million referrals from Facebook to Slate. By last month that number had dropped to 3.63 million. In other words, a near total collapse.
👓 ‘I snookered them’: Illinois Nazi candidate creates GOP dumpster fire | POLITICO
Republicans fear blowback from a Holocaust denier’s run for Congress.
👓 Spending a Morning on the Indie Web | Interdependent Thoughts
When Hossein Derakshan came back on-line after a 6 year absence in 2015, he was shocked to find how the once free flowing web ended up in walled gardens and silo’s. Musing about what he presented at State of the Net earlier this month, I came across Frank Meeuwsen’s postingabout the IndieWeb Summit starting today in Portland (livestream on YT). That send me off on a short trip around the IndieWeb and related topics.
The other two are where the open web is severely lacking: The seamless integration into one user interface of both reading and writing, making it very easy to respond to others that way, or add to the river of content.
As I read this I can’t help thinking about my friend Aaron Davis (h) a member of the IndieWeb, whose domain name is appropriately https://readwriterespond.com/.
Earlier this year, the New York Times released a WordPress plugin that will help sites that use editors to proofread and edit others’ posts or sites where writers collaborate on the same post. The plugin, called Integrated Content Editor (or ICE), allows changes to a post to be tracked and then accepted or rejected, much like the Track Changes feature in Microsoft Word. Here’s a glimpse of the plugin in action: In an interview with Poynter.org, Chief Technology Officer Marc Frons from the Times explained why the paper first had the tool developed for their own use.
👓 How Did the Nazis Gain Power in Germany? | New York Times
Benjamin Carter Hett’s “The Death of Democracy” traces the fall of the Weimar Republic and the rise of the Third Reich.
👓 How an Affair Between a Reporter and a Security Aide Has Rattled Washington Media | New York Times
The seizure of email records from a Times reporter alarmed First Amendment groups. Her relationship with an intelligence aide set off an ethical debate.
👓 Trump Leaves His Mark on a Presidential Keepsake | New York Times
Under President Trump, once stately medallions have gotten glitzier, and at least one featured a Trump property. Ethics watchdogs are worried.
👓 I’ve Been Reporting on MS-13 for a Year. Here Are the 5 Things Trump Gets Most Wrong. | ProPublica
The gang is not invading the country. They’re not posing as fake families. They’re not growing. To stop them, the government needs to understand them.
👓 How Square Made Its Own iPad Replacement | Wired
Square has always made hardware, but its new Android-based tablet shows it’s serious about controlling the payments experience.
👓 Firefox Is Back. It’s Time to Give It a Try. | New York Times
Mozilla redesigned its browser to take on Google’s Chrome. Firefox now has strong privacy features and is as fast as Chrome.
👓 Icon request: icon-highlighter (icon-marker) · Issue #2095 · FortAwesome/Font-Awesome | GitHub
A representation of a highlighter, similar to the pencil. I would use this in my Whiteboard app. Could also be named "icon-marker"
I may have to follow up on my threat to build a particular Post Kind for highlights on my website.
👓 Stonehenge builders used Pythagoras' theorem 2,000 years before Greek philosopher was born, say experts | The Telegraph
The builders of Britain’s ancient stone circles like Stonehenge were using Pythagoras' theorem 2,000 years before the Greek philosopher was born, experts have claimed.