By choosing images over links, and by restricting markup, Facebook, Twitter and Google+ are hostile to HTML. This is leading to the plague of infographics crowding out text, and of video used to convey minimal information. The rise of so-called infographics has been out of control this year, though the term was unknown a couple of years ago. I attribute this to the favourable presentation that image links get within Facebook, followed by Twitter and Google plus, and of course though other referral sites like Reddit. By showing a preview of the image, the item is given extra weight over a textual link; indeed even for a url link, Facebook and G+ will show an image preview by default.
Tag: social media
👓 Facebook asks U.S. banks for financial info to boost user engagement: WSJ | Reuters
Facebook Inc said on Monday it is in talks to deepen links with banks and financial institutions, saying it can help the firms improve their customer service.
Yeah, this doesn’t seem like a horrible idea. Particularly given how good banks and Facebook are at using our data ethically and securely. </sarcasm>
👓 RIP Facebook for Bridgy | Ryan Barrett
Ryan Barrett (snarfed.org)As planned, Facebook turned off some of its key APIs for posting and fetching data on Wednesday, and I disabled Facebook for Bridgy entirely. It’s a sad day. Facebook was t...
It is a sad day. Ryan couldn’t have said it better. This is almost precisely how I feel about it.
Thanks for keeping things up and running as long as you could Ryan! We appreciate it.
Brid.gy++
snarfed++
👓 The New York Times Fired My Doppelgänger | Quinn Norton | The Atlantic
I saw the internet create and destroy a bizarro version of myself.
I’ve been reading some pieces from my archive on context collapse and people losing jobs/opportunities as the result of online bullies digging up old social media posts which has become a bigger issue as of late. Many people have been wanting to leave social media platforms for their toxic cultures, and this seems to be a subset of that in that it has people going back and deleting old social posts for fear of implications in the present.
Quinn Norton has some relatively sage advice about the internet in this piece. Of course it’s no coincidence that The New York Times editorial board wanted to hire her.
Highlights, Quotes, Annotations, & Marginalia
History doesn’t ask you if you want to be born in a time of upheaval, it just tells you when you are. ❧
August 03, 2018 at 08:00AM
I have a teenage daughter, and I have told her all her life that all the grown-ups are making it up as they go along. I have also waggled my eyebrows suggestively while saying it, to make it clear to her that I mean me, too. ❧
August 03, 2018 at 08:00AM
This taught me that not everyone worthy of love is worthy of emulation. It also taught me that being given terrible ideas is not a destiny, and that intervention can change lives. ❧
August 03, 2018 at 08:02AM
Not everyone believes loving engagement is the best way to fight evil beliefs, but it has a good track record. Not everyone is in a position to engage safely with racists, sexists, anti-Semites, and homophobes, but for those who are, it’s a powerful tool. Engagement is not the one true answer to the societal problems destabilizing America today, but there is no one true answer. The way forward is as multifarious and diverse as America is, and a method of nonviolent confrontation and accountability, arising from my pacifism, is what I can bring to helping my society. ❧
August 03, 2018 at 08:03AM
I am not immune from these mistakes, for mistaking a limited snapshot of something for what it is in its entirety. I have been on the other side. ❧
August 03, 2018 at 08:04AM
I had been a victim of something the sociologists Alice Marwick and danah boyd call context collapse, where people create online culture meant for one in-group, but exposed to any number of out-groups without its original context by social-media platforms, where it can be recontextualized easily and accidentally. ❧
August 03, 2018 at 08:05AM
I had even written about context collapse myself, but that hadn’t saved me from falling into it, and then hurting other people I didn’t mean to hurt. ❧
August 03, 2018 at 08:06AM
It helped me learn a lesson: Be damn sure when you make angry statements. ❧
August 03, 2018 at 08:07AM
Don’t internet angry. If you’re angry, internet later. ❧
August 03, 2018 at 08:07AM
Context collapse is our constant companion online. ❧
August 03, 2018 at 08:07AM
I used to think that showing someone how wrong they were on the internet could fix the world. I said a lot of stupid things when I believed that. ❧
August 03, 2018 at 08:08AM
I am not, and will never be, a simple writer. I have sought to convict, accuse, comfort, and plead with my readers. I’m leaving the majority of my flaws online: Go for it, you can find them if you want. It’s a choice I made long ago. ❧
August 03, 2018 at 08:09AM
If you look long enough you can find my early terrible writing. You can find blog posts in which I am an idiot. I’ve had a lot of uninformed and passionate opinions on geopolitical issues from Ireland to Israel. You can find tweets I thought were witty, but think are stupid now. You can find opinions I still hold that you disagree with. I’m going to leave most of that stuff up. In doing so, I’m telling you that you have to look for context if you are seeking to understand me. You don’t have to try, I’m not particularly important, but I am complicated. When I die, I’m going to instruct my executors to burn nothing. Leave the crap there, because it’s part of my journey, and that journey has a value. People who came from where I did, and who were given the thoughts I was given, should know that the future can be different from the past. ❧
August 03, 2018 at 08:13AM
👓 Colin Walker takes a break (so I will too) | Colin Devroe
I’ve recently thought about doing something similar. Lately publishing to Facebook, Instagram, and my blog have felt like a bit of a chore. As such, I’m actually behind on my blogging. Which starts to create this odd pressure (that is only self-induced). I’ve taken many breaks in the past. They feel great and usually result in coming back with fresh perspectives. So I’m going to join my friend-from-across-the-ocean Colin and hop off of this blog, all social media, YouTube and my RSS reader for all of August. Comments are closed. See you in September.
Oh dear, it’s spreading!
👓 Making changes | Colin Walker
Colin Walker (colinwalker.blog)I've been doing some thinking - I know, always dangerous.
Returning to pen and paper on the way to work this morning I started making a few notes in response to James' post and extrapolated somewhat to the point where I set some things in motion internally. I think they're continuations of how I've been thinking and feeling for a while but have coalesced into something more solid.
Being largely offline for a number of days felt right, it felt like how I need to be at the moment. So I'm going to be stepping back.
Since reading James’ post I’ve been thinking a lot about it, and how to best respond myself. I haven’t figured it all out yet. I’ve been considering taking a bit of a break, particularly as Facebook and other platforms are making drastic changes to how they operate on the web.
I’ve also been thinking about it in light of the Greg McVerry’s EDU522 course which has a bit of a social media purge built into it.
That said, I’m not sure what I’ll ultimately be doing, but I find it refreshing that Colin’s made this decision for himself. It sounds like it’s coming from a genuine place and I know he probably needs the break as much as many of us do.
Colin, I know many of your friends stretched across the world will miss your regular presence, even if we don’t say it on a regular basis, but good luck, and know that we’re always here for you if you need anything!
I miss him already…
👓 The Expensive Education of Mark Zuckerberg and Silicon Valley | Kara Swisher for New York Times
Kara Swisher (nytimes.com)They have weaponized social media, and we are all paying the price.
I’m definitely just biding my time until their export feature improves. Then I’m moving out of this toxic space.
I still find it interesting that no one seems to be taking him to either enough task or calling him out on potential political bids. He could very easily and quickly use the platform to drastically reshape the political scenery in America and around the world.
Aside: Interesting to note that Kara Swisher’s byline here doesn’t have a link on it, even to a default NY Times page for her.
👓 Everything bad about Facebook is bad for the same reason | Wired
The philosophy of Hannah Arendt points to the banal evil beneath Facebook's many mistakes.
We definitely need some humanity and morality in our present mess. More and more I really want to rage quit Facebook for what it’s doing to the world, but I would like to have all my friends and family follow me.
👓 Why I’m Deleting All My Old Tweets | Wired
If you want to delete yours too, here's how.
👓 Social Timelines: Life Lost on the Curated Projections of Other People’s Lives? | James Shelley
James Shelley (jamesshelley.com)I’m looking for agreement, disagreement, or reflections on the following proposition: Time spent reading social timelines is time lost. Scrolling through a timeline is time consumed by the curated projections of other people’s lives, which are absorbed wholly and only at the cost of living your ...
An interesting take, I want to think about this for a bit…
👓 Just do it — by hand | Jeremy Cherfas
So when I do syndicate out to a silo, I do it by hand. Sure it would be tedious if I wanted to do that for every little thing, but I don't. I share the things I want to share, in the way I want to share them.
I’ve noticed that I typically syndicate almost everything manually despite the fact that I’ve got the ability to do it automatically. Doing it manually actually gives me a greater feeling of ownership somehow.
I do miss the ability to have public comments coming back however…
👓 Why Some of Instagram’s Biggest Memers Are Locking Their Accounts | The Atlantic
More meme accounts are going private. Their owners say it’s a new way to gain followers on a crowded platform.
👓 Farewell Social Media | James Shelley
James Shelley (jamesshelley.com)I recently purged the data from my Facebook account. This effort was shockingly labour intensive: it took a browser script all weekend to crunch, and still many aspects of the process required manual execution. Torching years and years of old Facebook activity felt so liberating that I found another...
A short, but solid piece on why James has left social media and consciously moved to his own blog and feed reader. I’m curious what his thoughts are a bit on into his experience. He’s definitely worth a follow.
👓 Feeds and Gardens | Kathleen Fitzpatrick
Kathleen Fitzpatrick (Kathleen Fitzpatrick)My last post, Connections, gathered a fair bit of response — enough that you can see a good example of Webmentions in action below it. There’s a little back-and-forth discussion there that mostly took place on Twitter, as well as a lot of likes and mentions that came from there as well.
🔖 Data Transfer Project https://datatransferproject.dev
The Data Transfer Project was formed in 2017 to create an open-source, service-to-service data portability platform so that all individuals across the web could easily move their data between online service providers whenever they want.
The contributors to the Data Transfer Project believe portability and interoperability are central to innovation. Making it easier for individuals to choose among services facilitates competition, empowers individuals to try new services and enables them to choose the offering that best suits their needs.
Current contributors include: Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter