“Before I sleep, I’m witness to many nightmares: Brooklynites are gutting each other over the sanctity of the bodega, Louisianan astro-poets are putting the wiccans to the torch because of their ongoing “amethyst erasure,” someone from Minnesota has gone viral claiming that it is an act of “class genocide” to know that drinking water keeps you hydrated, a Florida DSA chapter is publicly imploding over the contested value of feet pics, a Washington Post columnist is loudly pissing themselves over a petty workplace slight, the bassplayer from a long defunct hardcore band is begging people to share the gofundme page for a single mother made homeless by a twenty minute hospital visit, while armchair experts debate the value of mask mandates as #1milliondead and #bidenbts trend in your sidebar.” (tags: twitteramericainternetsocial-networks)
Best comment on Metafilter’s slow death I’ve seen so far (not on the site itself, of course): “But what this doesn’t take into account is why governments and countries and elite clubs should be integrated. It’s because of jobs and money and power. But there is no economic benefit to joining metafilter. This doesn’t mean it’s pointless or bad to stop people from using ethnic slurs or whatever. But it means that there isn’t anyone clamoring to get in. There aren’t a bunch of trans Indonesian zoomers longing to join metafilter if only it wasn’t so hostile. All the BIPOC committees and moderation in the world can’t create them out of thin air.” (tags: metafilterinternetpoliticsidentity-politics)
“A leverage point in avoiding toxoplasma, is the bridge people: people who are being rewarded for taking offense, and therefore select for the worst possible behavior of the outgroup. These people act as stressors, specifically triggering ideations of worst-case-scenarios. The fix here is removing these people from your feeds/circles of influence.” (tags: toxoplasmainternetragesocial-networks)
The socials are a handy way to stay in touch with friends, find out about dancing events (if they’re ever allowed again) and to get information direct from experts. They’re also an unrelenting cesspool of trolls, bots and undesireables. What to do?
Facebook
On my PC, FB Purity lets me filter on keyboards (I’ve chosen “trump” and “brexit”, as you can see). It can hide various types of update from your feed. I hide stuff like “Fred commented on this thing” (as FB friends sometimes like to argue with the undesirables), as well as adverts. You can also force the feed into chronological order rather than relying on Facebook’s algorithm to show you what it thinks you should see.
On my phone, I use Friendly for Facebook, which isn’t quite as good but does have the keyword filtering (“commented on” works as a filter) and, if you give them a donation, will also filter the adverts.
Secateur blocks people and optionally all their followers, unless you’re following them too. It’s adding to your Twitter blocklist, so once people are blocked, they’re blocked however you view Twitter. I guess there’s a risk that some decent people are following undesirables to keep an eye on them, but if it catches on, I can imagine people using separate accounts for that (of course, the undesirables can do the same trick, having one account for trolling and one for following, but they don’t seem to be yet). It wouldn’t be that hard to extend Tweak New Twitter to add a “Secateur” button to Twitter, either, I might look into that.
The next stage on from this, especially if the undesirables maintain accounts where they don’t follow other undesirables, would be the web of trust: only show replies from people you follow, people they follow, people the original tweeter follows, say.
Nitter is a free and open source alternative Twitter front-end focused on privacy. It’s an alternative website for which you don’t need Javascript enabled. It will also turn someone’s tweets into an RSS feed, useful if you just want to read them without signing up for Twitter.
“At 87, le Carré is publishing his 25th novel. He talks to John Banville about our ‘dismal statesmanship’ and what he learned from his time as a spy” (tags: spiesintelligenceMI5MI6le-carrepolitics)
Rebutting nonsense about the supposed publisher/platform distinction in Section 230 of the US’s Communications Decency Act. From the Cato Institute, so can’t be dismissed as leftist propaganda. (tags: lawcensorshipinternet)
“Scientists researching treatments for chronic fatigue syndrome say they face online abuse and harassment. Some are leaving the field. It’s a ‘new normal,’ they say, and patients may lose out.” (tags: researchculturepsychologyinternettrollingmedicine)
John Lanchester reviews 3 books on Facebook and Google, and comes to the conclusion that Facebook does things because it can, without considering whether it should. (tags: facebookadvertisingpsychologyInternetzuckerberggoogle)
“So I’ve been thinking for a while about the Discworld books, and how they can be divided up into three rough thematic phases; not based around the focal characters, but rather what the story is about.” (tags: discworldterry-pratchettbooksfantasy)
People don’t actually just stick to sites which match their political views, and their Facebook acquaintances don’t always share their politics. (tags: facebooksocietypoliticsinternet)
The NYT has a story about radical Muslims attempting to convert an American Christian and convince her to travel to join them in Syria, all done via the Internet, mainly Twitter and Skype. (tags: isisislaminternettwitterreligionradicalisation)
It’s 20 years since “Microserfs” was published. Here’s an article looking at the changing portrayals of the tech industry in fiction, from Microserf’s optimism to a more cynical view today. (tags: microserfsdouglas-couplandtechnologysilicon-valleyprogramming)
“Websites that are glorified shopping carts with maybe three dynamic pages are maintained by teams of people around the clock, because the truth is everything is breaking all the time, everywhere, for everyone. Right now someone who works for Facebook is getting tens of thousands of error messages and frantically trying to find the problem before the whole charade collapses.” (tags: programmingcodeinternetfunny)
“Websites that are glorified shopping carts with maybe three dynamic pages are maintained by teams of people around the clock, because the truth is everything is breaking all the time, everywhere, for everyone. Right now someone who works for Facebook is getting tens of thousands of error messages and frantically trying to find the problem before the whole charade collapses.” (tags: programmingcodeinternetfunny)
“MONEYCLIP THAT POSTS TO FACEBOOK WHEN YOU NEED A SHIT” “TEMPORARY TATTOO THAT TWEETS WHEN YOU HAVE NIGHTMARES” (tags: funnyhumourtechnologywearablestrategy)
An interesting thread about the internet social justice movement, on Slate Star Codex: “I am having a hard time finding a middle ground between SJ and sociopathy. I don’t like what SJ does to my brain. But realistically it’s not actually feasible for me to not give a shit about anyone. Could use a little advice.” Commenter then gets good advice. (tags: social-justicesjwinternetsociopath)
“The knowledge that attempting to block porn on the internet is bound to backfire has now gone mainstream. (BBC News, Telegraph) Well, there’s a temptation to say “we told you so”, because we did. Repeatedly. So far, sites we know that are subject to overblocking on either TalkTalk and BT include BishUK (a sexual education site for teenagers), LGBTfriend, Edinburgh Women’s Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre, Sexual Abuse Scotland, Doncaster Domestic Abuse Helpline and Reducing The Risk (Another domestic abuse help site).” (tags: porninternetcensorshiptalktalksexfilteringdavid-cameron)
“A weekend in Warsaw made me think about Cambridge at night. In Cambridge after 6pm the city centre empties ready for the only true night time economy: binge drinking. The Market Square alive with stall holders and shoppers at 5pm magically transforms into a ghostly empty space one hour later. It is a Cinderella midnight moment that never fails to astonish. By dusk the Cambridge ball is over and the Prince has gone home to watch T.V. Only a lonely burger van takes up residence creating a sad and soulless image that realist painter Edward Hopper could capture.” Yeah, it’s crap. (tags: night-lifedrinkingalcoholnightcambridgewarsaw)
…unless you want to contribute towards evangelical Christian evangelising, of course. But apparently some schools in the UK are collecting shoeboxes of gifts for the Samaritan’s Purse organisation without fully realising what they’re about. (tags: religionsamaritans-pursechristianitychristmas-childchristmasevangelism)
“Scientists like to think of science as self-correcting. To an alarming degree, it is not.” Talks about the problems with reproducing research. (tags: economistjournalsresearchstatisticsscience)
A presentation from Joek Spolsky on the Stack Exchange sites and the culture they’re trying to promote there, contrasted with things like discussion forums, other "answers" sites, and whatnot. (tags: discussionstack-exchangejoel-spolskyinternetstack-overflowculture)
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