Here are some web trends for 2020:
Responsive web design in 2020 should be a given because every serious project that you create should look good and be completely usable on all devices. But there’s no need to over-complicate things.
Web Development in 2020: What Coding Tools You Should Learn article gives an overview of recommendations what you learn to become a web developer in 2020.
You might have seen Web 3.0 on some slides. What is the definition of web 3 we are talking about here?
There seems to be many different to choose from… Some claim that you need to blockchain the cloud IOT otherwise you’ll just get a stack overflow in the mainframe but I don’t agree on that.
Information on the web address bar will be reduced on some web browsers. With the release of Chrome 79, Google completes its goal of erasing www from the browser by no longer allowing Chrome users to automatically show the www trivial subdomain in the address bar.
You still should target to build quality web site and avoid the signs of a low-quality web site. Get good inspiration for your web site design.
Still a clear and logical structure is the first thing that needs to be turned over in mind before the work on the website gears up. The website structure for search robots is its internal links. The more links go to a page, the higher its priority within the website, and the more times the search engine crawls it.
You should upgrade your web site, but you need to do it sensibly and well. Remember that a site upgrade can ruin your search engine visibility if you do it badly. The biggest risk to your site getting free search engine visibility is site redesign. Bad technology selection can ruin the visibility of a new site months before launch. Many new sites built on JavaScript application frameworks do not benefit in any way from the new technologies. Before you go into this bandwagon, you should think critically about whether your site will benefit from the dynamic capabilities of these technologies more than they can damage your search engine visibility. Well built redirects can help you keep the most outbound links after site changes.
If you go to the JavaScript framework route on your web site, keep in mind that there are many to choose, and you need to choose carefully to find one that fits for your needs and is actively developed also in the future.
JavaScript survey: Devs love a bit of React, but Angular and Cordova declining. And you’re not alone… a chunk of pros also feel JS is ‘overly complex’
Keep in mind the recent changes on the video players and Google analytics. And for animated content keep in mind that GIF animations exists still as a potential tool to use.
Keep in mind the the security. There is a skill gap in security for many. I’m not going to say anything that anyone who runs a public-facing web server doesn’t already know: the majority of these automated blind requests are for WordPress directories and files. PHP exploits are a distant second. And there are many other things that are automatically attacked. Test your site with security scanners.
APIs now account for 40% of the attack surface for all web-enabled apps. OWASP has identified 10 areas where enterprises can lower that risk. There are many vulnerability scanning tools available. Check also How to prepare and use Docker for web pentest . Mozilla has a nice on-line tool for web site security scanning.
The slow death of Flash continues. If you still use Flash, say goodbye to it. Google says goodbye to Flash, will stop indexing Flash content in search.
Use HTTPS on your site because without it your site rating will drop on search engines visibility. It is nowadays easy to get HTTPS certificates.
Write good content and avoid publishing fake news on your site. Finland is winning the war on fake news. What it’s learned may be crucial to Western democracy,
Think to who you are aiming to your business web site to. Analyze who is your “true visitor” or “power user”. A true visitor is a visitor to a website who shows a genuine interest in the content of the site. True visitors are the people who should get more of your site and have the potential to increase the sales and impact of your business. The content that your business offers is intended to attract visitors who are interested in it. When they show their interest, they are also very likely to be the target group of the company.
Should you think of your content management system (CMS) choice? Flexibility, efficiency, better content creation: these are just some of the promised benefits of a new CMS. Here is How to convince your developers to change CMS.
Here are some fun for the end:
Did you know that if a spider creates a web at a place?
The place is called a website
Confession: How JavaScript was made.
2,361 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://forums.malwarebytes.com/topic/259913-checking-a-web-link-for-malware/
https://www.virustotal.com/gui/url/71d221268f9235abc6f18795da877eeb8c51f05293eb54dca7be453f5c7eb045/detection
https://www.virustotal.com/gui/url/71d221268f9235abc6f18795da877eeb8c51f05293eb54dca7be453f5c7eb045/detection
Tomi Engdahl says:
If you still believe in Fox after its own lawyers argued “no reasonable person would believe Fox,” you’re too busy trying to one-up people to figure out what’s going on
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/29/917747123/you-literally-cant-believe-the-facts-tucker-carlson-tells-you-so-say-fox-s-lawye
Tomi Engdahl says:
Palvelumuotoilu ja sen myötä määrittely on keskeisin yksittäinen työvaihe onnistuneessa verkkosivu- tai -kauppahankkeessa.
Palvelumuotoilu ja määrittely
– verkkopalvelun ostajan opas, osa 3/10
https://into-digital.fi/palvelumuotoilu-ja-maarittely-verkkopalvelun-ostajan-opas-osa-3-10/?utm_source=fbmainos&utm_medium=kuva&utm_campaign=Palvelumuotoilu+ja+m%C3%A4%C3%A4rittely&fbclid=IwAR00Dlkf24hgHMGHH8q2XzkNTO9W_W-sad3PPgFMkOP1rcFW1msn3s43imw
Palvelumuotoilu ja sen myötä määrittely on keskeisin yksittäinen työvaihe onnistuneessa verkkosivu- tai -kauppahankkeessa. Tässä työvaiheessa on keskiössä selvittää ja suunnitella, mitä ollaan tekemässä, miksi ja miten.
Ennen palvelumuotoilua ja määrittelyä palveluntuottajien on mahdoton antaa tarkkaa kuvausta ja tarjousta hankkeesta.
Esimerkki: jos tätä työvaihetta ei olla tehty, on tarjoajan hankalaa päättää, tarvitseeko verkkopalveluun tehdä esimerkiksi 1 600 euroa maksava huippuhieno hakutoiminto. Usein tarjouspyynnöissä lukee ’’hakutoiminto’’. Mutta miksi? Mihin hakua tarvitaan? Kuka sitä käyttää? Millainen hakutoiminto tarkalleen toteutetaan, jos sellainen päätetään toteuttaa? Ja niin edelleen.
Sama pohdinta tulee käydä kaikkien verkkosivuston sivupohjien, sisältöelementtien, toiminnallisuuksien, integraatioiden ja monen muunkin asian suhteen.
Eli korostan: mitä, miksi ja miten.
Palvelumuotoilun ja määrittelyn hyödyt
Huolellinen määrittely on edellytys sille, että tarjoajat voivat tehdä tarkan ja kattavan kuvauksen ja tarjouksen projektista.
Kun määrittely on tehty huolellisesti, myös varsinainen projektin suunnittelu ja toteutus etenee sujuvasti aikataulussa ja budjetissa.
Kaikki projektissa tehtävät päätökset pohjautuvat huolelliseen pohdintaan, analytiikkaan ja mahdolliseen tutkimukseen.
Mitä palvelumuotoilu ja määrittely pitävät sisällään?
Tämä verkkopalveluprojektin olennaisimman yksittäisen työvaiheen sisältö tietysti vaihtelee hankkeen kompleksisuuden mukaan.
Mitä palvelumuotoilu- ja määrittelyvaiheesta syntyy? Miten?
Dokumentti. Tässä blogissa käsitellyt aiheet koostetaan yhdeksi määrittelydokumentaatioksi, joka voidaan lisätä myyjän ja ostajan välisen palvelusopimuksen liitteeksi. Asiakkaalla on siis mustaa valkoisella siitä, mitä on ostanut.
Jälleen kerran, riippuen hankkeen kompleksisuudesta, työvaihe vaatii muun muassa:
Asiakkaan projektiryhmän (ja mahdollisesti muidenkin asiakkaan asiantuntijoiden) ja toimittajan välisiä palavereita
Mahdollisesti kolmannen osapuolen, asiakkaan ja toimittajan välisiä palavereita – esimerkiksi liittyen ulkoisiin järjestelmiin
Teknistä selvittelyä esimerkiksi integraatioista ja analytiikasta
Asiakkaan sisäisiä pohdintoja asioista, jotka vaativat liiketoiminnan strategisia päätöksiä: muun muassa mitä palveluita yritys tarjoaa ja miten ne jaotellaan?
Toimittajan tekemää sisällön ja muun materiaalin tuotantoa: esimerkiksi käyttäjäkysely, käyttäjäpolkukaavio, sisältörakenne ja määrittelydokumentaatio
Kuka määrittelyvaiheen voi tehdä ja milloin?
Tämän työvaiheen voi tehdä joko ennen hanketta tai hankkeen alussa. Yksi asia on varma: se on tehtävä tai lopputulos jää varmasti potentiaalistaan. Jos työvaihe toteutetaan ensin, määrittelydokumenttia käyttämällä saadaan vertailukelpoiset tarjoukset, kun verkkopalvelun toteutus kilpailutetaan.
Jos työvaihe tehdään projektin aikana, on asiakkaan kyettävä asennoitumaan siihen, ettei verkkopalvelutoimittaja voi antaa itse toteutusprojektista kuin summittaisen työmääräarvion. Ja näin usein syntyvät kauhukokemukset budjetin suuresta ylittymisestä.
Rehellisyyden nimissä on kuitenkin todettava: yksinkertaisten verkkosivujen osalta se ei ole mitään rakettitiedettä. Näissä tapauksissa asiakkaan ja meidän välisen aloituspalaverin sisältämä keskustelu riittää mainiosti, eikä määrittely vaadi mitään sen järeämpää. Erityisasiantuntijuuden tarve kuitenkin kasvaa, kun kyseeseen tulee esimerkiksi käyttäjäanalyysi, kävijätutkimukset, tekniset reunaehdot ja mahdollisuudet sekä integraatiot.
Pähkinänkuoressa
Palvelumuotoilu ja määrittely on tehtävä jossain välissä, jos asiakas haluaa verkkosivu- tai verkkokauppauudistuksensa olevan menestys. Se ei kuitenkaan vaadi workshoppaamista workshoppaamisen ilosta, vaan aitoa ja tehokasta pohdintaa. Se ei myöskään vie välttämättä paljoakaan aikaa: esimerkiksi 20 htp:n eli 16 000 €:n verkkosivuhankkeessa meidän työstämme keskimäärin noin 1 htp eli 800 € sisältää palvelumuotoilua ja määrittelyä. Loput työmäärästä on sitten ihan konkreettista projektinjohtoa, piirtämistä ja koodaamista.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://into-digital.fi/kayttokokemus-ja-kayttoliittyma-verkkopalvelun-ostajan-opas-osa-5-10/?utm_source=fbmainos&utm_medium=kuva&utm_campaign=K%C3%A4ytt%C3%B6kokemus+ja+k%C3%A4ytt%C3%B6liittym%C3%A4&fbclid=IwAR377J75LMZ2YHNNg8vYuM7BypkuU0cr2cwOHn94R5iExG0MxibbuiIzjMw
Palvelumuotoilun, määrittelyn ja näitä seuraavien sisältörakenteen ja sisällön suunnittelun myötä tiedämme mitä, miksi ja miten verkkopalveluprojektimme pyrkii saavuttamaan. On aika paneutua palvelumme käyttökokemuksen ja ulkoasun puoleen.
Ennen UX/UI-suunnittelua emme vielä tiedä sitä, miten verkkopalvelun elementit ja ominaisuudet konkreettisesti toimivat. Tässä työvaiheessa pääsemme tuomaan sanalliset suunnitelmamme visuaaliseen, testattavaan ja lopullista ulkoasuaan vastaavaan muotoon.
UX/UI-suunnittelulla pyrimme vastaamaan seuraaviin kysymyksiin
Miten palvelun ja tämän toiminnallisuuksien käyttäminen käytännössä tapahtuu?
Miltä palvelun (käyttöliittymän) käyttäminen tuntuu?
Miltä palvelu näyttää?
käyttöliittymäsuunnittelun ensimmäinen työvaihe on rautalanka. Se on visuaalisesti mahdollisimman yksinkertainen esitys tulevasta verkkopalvelusta, sen toiminnallisuuksista ja käyttöliittymäelementtien keskinäisestä suhteesta. Määrittelyvaiheen hedelmät eli sisältörakenne, elementit ja sivupohjat, toiminnallisuudet sekä käyttöliittymän runko, kuten navigaatio ja valikot, kuvataan yksinkertaistettuna rautalangassa.
Käyttöliittymäsuunnittelun kulmakivi on: pitämällä ensimmäiset luonnoksemme visuaalisesti mahdollisimman yksinkertaisena takaamme sen, että kaikki tulevan verkkopalvelun näkymät ja toiminnot tulevat otettua huomioon, ja mahdollisten muutosten toteuttaminen on yksinkertaista ja vikkelää.
Testaa, osallista, kommentoi ja iteroi
Klikkailtava rautalankaprototyyppi mahdollistaa niin palvelun käytettävyyden kuin rakenteellisen kokonaisuuden testaamisen lopullista palvelua vastaavassa muodossaan. Näin pääsemme testaamaan, miten palvelun sisäinen rakenne toimii, miltä ominaisuuksien käyttäminen tuntuu ja miten ratkaisuehdotus kohtaa projektille asetetut vaatimukset.
Tässä vaiheessa projektia pääsemme ottamaan mukaan testaukseen myös erilaiset sidosryhmät
Kun kaikki alkaa rautalankavaiheen luonnosten osalta olla reilassa, pääsemme vihdoin keskittymään (ainakin asiakkaiden) mielestä projektin ylivoimaisesti jännittävimpään vaiheeseen – käyttöliittymän visuaaliseen ilmeeseen! Eli leiskoihin, siis layouteihin.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook Declared War on Apple, and It Just May Signal the End of FacebookThe company has been heading toward a major crash for a long time.
https://www.inc.com/justin-bariso/facebook-declared-war-on-apple-it-just-may-signal-end-of-facebook.html?cid=sf01002
Facebook is starting to look desperate.
Over the past weeks, the world’s largest social network has taken out several full-page ads in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. The ads attacked Apple’s new privacy changes, which Facebook claims will severely hurt small businesses, and “will change the internet as we know it–for the worse.”
How Facebook moved fast and broke things
“Move fast and break things. Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.” –Mark Zuckerberg
“Move fast and break things” was Facebook’s official motto for years. It was intended to provide direction to designers and managers, but it became an essential part of the company’s DNA.
Well, Facebook did move fast. And it broke a lot of things in the process.
The company broke important things, like the trust of its users. Many of whom began to understand that while Facebook’s product was “free,” they were paying by becoming the product.
For example, in exchange for the ability to keep up with friends and family, to have a personalized news feed, and to watch funny cat videos, users were encouraged to sell their online soul–in the form of personalized data that Facebook uses to sell relevant ads
After all, the company had withstood scandal after scandal. Billions of people continued to use Facebook.
The problem for Facebook is that Apple’s update is about to educate a lot of users on how much Facebook is actually tracking them–and it’s going to make it a lot easier for those users to opt out.
The fact that Facebook is fighting so hard against Apple shows that the company anticipates a huge hit to its business.
What about Facebook’s argument that Apple’s new policy will change the internet for the worse?
Facebook claims this change will lead to your favorite cooking sites or sports blogs needing to charge subscription fees, “making the internet much more expensive and reducing high-quality free content.”
But here’s the thing: The free content model has been broken for years. It’s why most online publications have already moved to other ways of making money, whether through subscriptions, products, or similar means.
In other words, Facebook isn’t just fighting Apple, it’s fighting the future.
Of course, Facebook could simply face the future–and Apple–head-on.
The situation is clear: Facebook has been living in its own world for a long time. And barring a major change in direction, it’s a world that’s destined to come crashing down.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Rise of Fake Gurus: The Dark Truth Behind Making MILLIONS from Online Courses.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=L9Gpr7PEnbs&feature=share
On the 3rd of September 2015, Tai Lopez released his infamous ‘Here in My Garage’ Youtube Ad.
This single Ad created a wave of what some have described as fake gurus, selling you their courses and mastermind programs like no tomorrow with promises of ‘financial freedom’, ‘a laptop lifestyle’, and the possibility to ‘travel around the world’. Sounds great, right?
In this video I break down the business model of how to make millions from online courses using the methods that these fake gurus use, and expose the dark truth behind this rapidly growing industry.
Tomi Engdahl says:
This Website Simulates The Pain Of Loading The Internet In The ’90s
https://www.iflscience.com/technology/this-website-simulates-the-pain-of-loading-the-internet-in-the-90s/
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/10/introducing-slowww-ml-the-slow-web-server/
Tomi Engdahl says:
29 Years Ago Today, The First Web Page Went Live. This Is What It Looked Like
https://www.iflscience.com/technology/29-years-ago-today-the-first-web-page-went-live-this-is-what-it-looked-like/
In the 1980s, Tim Berners-Lee became frustrated with how information was shared and stored at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).
He noticed that, as well as being distributed inefficiently, information was being lost at the organization, largely due to a high turnover of staff. Technical details of old projects could sometimes be lost forever, or else had to be recovered through lengthy investigations in the event of an emergency. Different divisions of CERN used software written in a variety of programming languages, on different operating systems, making the transfer of knowledge cumbersome and time-consuming.
In response to these annoyances, he made a suggestion in 1989 that would go on to change the world, titled with some lackluster: Information Management: A Proposal.
This was the beginning of the World Wide Web.
https://www.w3.org/History/1989/proposal.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wait, What? New Research Says Internet Use Is Killing Your Memory
https://futurism.com/the-byte/internet-killing-memory
We’ve all heard the old warning: staring at a screen all day will rot your brain. Though it’s not quite so dramatic, there may be some truth in the message after all — new research reveals that frequent internet use can change how our brains work.
The “limitless stream of prompts and notifications from the Internet encourages us towards constantly holding a divided attention,” said Firth, “which then in turn may decrease our capacity for maintaining concentration on a single task.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
This bullshit statement has become all too common:
“Our European visitors are important to us.
This site is currently unavailable to visitors from the European Economic Area”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Adobe Flash Player Ending Sparks Wave of Jokes, Memes and Tributes
https://www.newsweek.com/adobe-flash-player-end-life-last-day-memes-jokes-tributes-social-media-1558240
In 2020, December 31 is not only being celebrated as New Year’s Eve. For many internet users it marks another milestone: the death of Adobe Flash.
Yes, following years of complaints and frustrations, the software that created a multitude of nostalgic animated video games will no longer be supported after Thursday, with Adobe blocking Flash content from running in Flash Player from January 12, 2021.
The software—which was designed as a way to make internet apps that can play audio and video content from a browser or plug-in—has long been despised in some corners of the internet due to a bevy of security vulnerabilities, incompatibility with the Apple ecosystem, excessive power consumption and a general vibe of outdatedness.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Adobe Flash Player is officially dead tomorrow
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/adobe-flash-player-is-officially-dead-tomorrow/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Goodbye Flash, goodbye FarmVille
https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/31/goodbye-flash-goodbye-farmville/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://inktank.fi/seven-great-tips-from-seven-great-american-writers/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Case Study: Strategic content marketing campaigns
Creating targeted content & campaigns across scientific audiences
https://partnerships.nature.com/case-studies/strategic-content-marketing-campaigns/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Adobe Flash Player is finally laid to rest
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55497353
Adobe Flash Player, the browser plug-in that brought rich animations and interactivity to the early web, has officially reached the end of its life.
Released in 1996, Flash was once one of the most popular ways for people to stream videos and play games online.
But it was plagued with security problems and failed to transition to the smartphone era.
Adobe will no longer offer security updates for Flash and has urged people to uninstall it.
It will also stop videos and animations running in its Flash Player from 12 January.
Tomi Engdahl says:
“The best tool I’ve yet seen for making full web page screen capture and annotating…”
https://getfireshot.com/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe_2020
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/eus-digital-markets-act-there-lot-room-improvement
Tomi Engdahl says:
Projektin suunnittelu ja käynnistäminen – verkkopalvelun ostajan opas, osa 2/10
https://into-digital.fi/projektin-suunnittelu-ja-kaynnistaminen-verkkopalvelun-ostajan-opas-osa-2-10/
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Truth is out there – tiede ja totuuden jälkeinen yhteiskunta
https://www.sivista.fi/blogi/the-truth-is-out-there-tiede-ja-totuuden-jalkeinen-yhteiskunta/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Media is not unlike many startup markets — there may be infinite needs for diverse products, but there are only a handful of those needs that have serious dollars attached to them.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/04/the-cauldrons-of-gold-theory-of-media-and-startups/?tpcc=ECFB2021
There are thousands of other niches, but they are impoverished with limited readership, users and recourse to revenue.
Put another way, these are tournament markets, where the winners can take all and where it is worth the gamble to have a small chance at a massive outcome rather than a good chance at a mediocre one.
New markets do get invented and old markets expand and contract. There are absolutely startups that sort of come from nowhere and dazzle us with their originality and ability to create whole new categories. Yet, for every unicorn that gets its start that way, there are 10 others that get built in existing major markets and compete for the big reward offered to the winner.
There isn’t anything wrong with investors who want to fund the fifteenth startup in a space. It makes sense — that’s where the rewards are, or at least, where we perceive the rewards to be. What needs to change is how to make some of those other niches offer the same incentives for innovation. How can more markets offer cauldrons of gold? Is that even possible?
Tomi Engdahl says:
IT’S TIME TO DEPLATFORM TRUMP
He incited a riot against Congress — Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube should remove him
https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/6/22217894/deplatform-trump-twitter-ban-facebook-youtube-congress-capitol-riots?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4
As you no doubt already know, today, President Trump incited his followers to storm the US Capitol, where they disrupted the constitutionally mandated certification of the Electoral College ballots, affirming Joe Biden’s victory against him. Odds that his ongoing attempted coup will succeed remain low, but not impossible. And a bedrock belief that many of us have carried all our lives — that American democracy will long outlast us — has never been so shaken.
Yesterday, I wrote about the sense that the fracture in our shared sense of reality seems to be accelerating. I asked whether platforms ought to take it as a moral responsibility to reverse that divide — and, if so, how. Today, I advocate for one smaller but still difficult and essential step in that direction.
It’s time for Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to remove Trump.
Calls for platforms to remove Trump have been coming for years.
Americans voted Trump out of office, but instead of accepting that result, he has sought to overturn it. By inciting the violent occupation of the US Capitol, Trump has given up any legitimate claim to power. In 14 days, barring catastrophe, he will be out of office. The only question is how much damage he will do in the meantime — and we know, based on long experience, that his Twitter and Facebook accounts will be among his primary weapons.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Featured Article
Tech leaders speak out about platforms’ roles in US Capitol riots
‘You’ve got blood on your hands, Jack and Zuck’
https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/06/tech-leaders-speak-out-about-platforms-roles-in-us-capitol-riots/?tpcc=ECFB2021
After pro-Trump extremists violently stormed the U.S. Capitol, a number of tech executives and industry leaders are calling on Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to more aggressively curb the president’s messages amplifying and endorsing violence.
After Trump released a video calling the extremists “very special” and telling them to go home, Facebook and Twitter have taken down the content. Twitter has locked Donald Trump’s Twitter account for at least 12 hours, warning that “any future violations” of Twitter rules will result in permanent suspension of the account.
The riot triggered the platforms, after long scrutiny, to finally react to Trump’s incendiary tweets and messaging. As the situation continues to play out, some prominent tech figures see the root of the riots as the platforms that ignored and amplified misinformation surrounding the election, allowing violent rhetoric to spin out of control in the final days of the Trump presidency.
Tomi Engdahl says:
US says India, Italy, and Turkey digital taxes are discriminatory, but won’t take any actions for now
https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/07/us-says-india-italy-and-turkey-digital-taxes-are-discriminatory-but-wont-take-any-actions-for-now/?tpcc=ECFB2021
Digital services taxes adopted by India, Italy, and Turkey in the past years discriminate against U.S. companies, the U.S. Trade Representative said on Wednesday.
India, which has become the largest market for Silicon Valley giants Google and Facebook, introduced digital taxes in 2016 to target foreign firms. Last year, the world’s second largest internet market expanded the scope of its levy to cover a range of additional categories.
Despite the strong findings on three nations’ digital services taxes, USTR said it is not taking any specific actions “at this time” but will “continue to evaluate all available options.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Putin’s Disinformation Campaign Claims Stunning Victory With Capitol Hill ‘Coup’
https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium.HIGHLIGHT-putin-s-disinformation-campaign-claims-stunning-victory-with-capitol-hill-coup-1.9432690
Russian information warfare ops have had one goal ever since the Cold War began: to sow chaos and undermine Americans’ sense of a shared reality. Trump was just a means to that end
As a shirtless, horned man stood at the dais of the U.S. Senate on Wednesday, the words Harvard Law School Prof. Yochai Benkler told Haaretz ahead of the 2020 election sprang to mind. Since the Cold War began, Soviet – and then Russian – information warfare campaigns have never been about pushing out a single message. Prof. Benkler, one of the leading authorities on disinformation online, explained that the primary role of Russian propaganda “is to create a world where nothing is true and everything is possible.”
We tend to think of disinformation as a social media problem. We also tend to think of it as a new issue. However, research such as Benkler and Rand’s shines a light on the infrastructure of the #StopTheSteal campaign, which morphed into Wednesday’s violent attack on democracy.
The fraud that led to a coalition of far-right conspiracy theorists besieging the Capitol was one founded on a baseless, thoroughly debunked and intentionally distorted perception of the election.
Tomi Engdahl says:
From
https://www.facebook.com/groups/majordomo/permalink/10161495635154522/
Actions have consequences. And so does technology. And yes, the fact that Zuckerberg has an outsized influence on public discourse is really frightening. But you know what, so does Rupert Murdoch
Don’t get mad, change the nature of the game. Change the nature of the technology. That’s what we were doing at CERN when we built the Web. The Web was not an a-political project.
As soon as I got back to my office and could send an email (it was 1992, out of office meant no Internet), the first thing I did was send a message to Jock Gill who was running the Clinton-Gore ’92 Online campaign and told him that the Web was the technology platform they had been looking for to build Al’s Information Superhighway. The Web had fewer than a hundred users at the time. The Web was not the only network hypertext game in town but we had an open technology that had been built with government money and so could be used without encumbrance.
The idea of the Web was never to replace Murdoch, it was to change the characteristics of the feedback loop. The idea was that if people could see his lies exposed, this would impose a cost and force him to change his behavior. The Clinton people and the MIT people used to call this ‘disintermediation’. The Bush people called it ‘getting round the filter’.
OK so changing the feedback loop didn’t have the effect I expected and instead of forcing politicians and the media to tell the truth we instead enabled a politician who doesn’t just lie, he has his own entire alternative reality to become President of the United States and he has just set a rampaging mob to storm the capitol.
OK, my bad. So whose up for taking down the Zuck?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Free Speech
https://xkcd.com/1357/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.mediabot.fi/social-media-management-tyovalineet/?fbclid=IwAR12C82bgjEfDgvbXM4cO7ZW-afE_Sp5oUV2hSkg6bsKpVO7vEu0DWDMrfM
Tomi Engdahl says:
Beijing updates internet regulation to include a wide swathe of services, fake news and fraud
https://www.scmp.com/tech/policy/article/3117015/beijing-updates-internet-regulation-include-wide-swath-services-fake
A comprehensive update to China’s internet services regulation details the services covered and banned activities
Usage of search engines, instant messaging, online payments and more could violate the law even if conducted from overseas servers
Tomi Engdahl says:
Europe seizes on social media’s purging of Trump to bang the drum for regulation
https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/11/europe-seizes-on-social-medias-purging-of-trump-to-bang-the-drum-for-regulation/?tpcc=ECFB2021
Big tech’s decision to pull the plug on president Donald Trump’s presence on their platforms, following his supporters’ attack on the US capital last week, has been seized on in Europe as proof — if proof were needed — that laws have not kept pace with tech market power and platform giants must face consequences over the content they amplify and monetize.
Writing in Politico, the European Commission’s internal market commissioner, Thierry Breton, dubs the 6/1 strike at the heart of the US political establishment as social media’s ‘9/11’ moment — aka, the day the whole world woke up to the real-world impact of unchecked online hate and lies.
OPINION
Thierry Breton: Capitol Hill — the 9/11 moment of social media
https://www.politico.eu/article/thierry-breton-social-media-capitol-hill-riot/
The Capitol Hill riot exposes the fragility of our democracies — and the threat underregulated tech companies can pose to their survival.
We are all still shocked by the images of protesters storming the U.S. Congress to halt the certification of the next U.S. president. The attack on the U.S. Capitol — a symbol of democracy — feels like a direct assault on all of us.
Just as 9/11 marked a paradigm shift for global security, 20 years later we are witnessing a before-and-after in the role of digital platforms in our democracy.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The unprecedented reactions of online platforms in response to the riots have left us wondering: Why did they fail to prevent the fake news and hate speech leading to the attack on Wednesday in the first place? Regardless of whether silencing a standing president was the right thing to do, should that decision be in the hands of a tech company with no democratic legitimacy or oversight? Can these platforms still argue that they have no say over what their users are posting?
https://www.politico.eu/article/thierry-breton-social-media-capitol-hill-riot/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hacker used ransomware to lock victims in their IoT chastity belt
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hacker-used-ransomware-to-lock-victims-in-their-iot-chastity-belt/
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Capitol riot and its aftermath makes the case for tech regulation more urgent, but no simpler
https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/11/is-the-tweet-mightier-than-the-sword/?tpcc=ECFB2021
Should Jack Dorsey be able to silence the president of the United States?
Last week and throughout the weekend, technology companies took the historic step of deplatforming the president of the United States in the wake of a riot in which the US Capitol was stormed by a collection of white nationalists, QAnon supporters, and right wing activists
The decision to remove Donald Trump, his fundraising and moneymaking apparatus, and a large portion of his supporters from their digital homes because of their incitements to violence in the nation’s Capitol on January 6th and beyond, has led a chorus of voices to call for the regulation of the giant tech platforms.
They argue that private companies shouldn’t have the sole power to erase the digital footprint of a sitting president.
But there’s a reason why the legislative hearings in Congress, and the pressure from the president, have not created any new regulations. And there’s also a reason why — despite all of the protestations from the president and his supporters — no lawsuits have effectively been brought against the platforms for their decisions.
The law, for now, is on their side.
The protections of speech afforded to American citizens under the First Amendment only apply to government efforts to limit speech.
The thing is, that marketplace of ideas is always open, but publishers and platforms have the freedom to decide what they want to sell into it.
So, the First Amendment doesn’t protect an individuals’ rights to access any platform and say whatever the hell they want. In fact, it protects businesses in many cases from having their freedom of speech violated by having the government force them to publish something they don’t want to on their platforms.
First, the cancellation of speech by businesses isn’t actually hostile to the foundation America was built on. If a group doesn’t like the way it’s being treated in one outlet, it can try and find another. Essentially, no one can force a newspaper to print their letter to the editor.
Second, users’ speech isn’t what is protected under Section 230; it protects platforms from liability for that speech, which indirectly makes it safe for users to speak freely.
Right now, Section 230 protects all of these social media companies from legal liability for the stuff that people publish on their platforms (unlike publishers). The gist of the law is that since these companies don’t actively edit what people post on the platforms, but merely provide a distribution channel for that content, then they can’t be held accountable for what’s in the posts.
The companies argue that they’re exercising their own rights to freedom of speech through the algorithms they’ve developed to highlight certain pieces of information or entertainment, or in removing certain pieces of content. And their broad terms of service agreements also provide legal shields that allow them to act with a large degree of impunity.
Conservatives and liberals crowing for the removal of Section 230 protections may find that it would reinstitute a level of comity online, but the fringes will be even further marginalized. If you’re a free speech absolutist, that may or may not be the best course of action.
Keller notes that the existing body of laws “does not currently support must-carry claims against user-facing platforms like Facebook or YouTube, because Congress emphatically declined to extend it to them in the 1996 Telecommunications Act.”
Lawmakers in Europe, seeing the actions from U.S. companies over the last week, aren’t wasting any time in drafting their own responses and increasing their calls for more regulation.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/majordomo/permalink/10161496491794522/
A friendly reminder that freedom of speech is very much a cornerstone “liberal” ideal. If you don’t support it, you aren’t liberal. You’re just an authoritarian who is insecure in your ideas, and instead of debating different ideas with an open mind and confidence in your position, you want them silenced.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Adobe to block Flash content from running on January 12, 2021
Adobe releases final Flash update with stronger language asking users to uninstall the app before its EOL.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/adobe-to-block-flash-content-from-running-on-january-12-2021/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Study finds around one-third of Americans regularly get their news from Facebook
https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/12/study-finds-around-one-third-of-americans-regularly-get-their-news-from-facebook/
Around a third of Americans regularly get their news from Facebook, according to the latest study from Pew Research Center, whose surveys aim to better understand the current media landscape in the U.S. In the updated report, Pew Research found that around half of U.S. adults, or 53%, said they “often” or “sometimes” use social media to get their news. This is spread out across a number of sites, but Facebook is at the top of the list.
The study found that 36% of U.S. adults said they “regularly” access Facebook to get news. This is a significantly larger percentage than almost any other social media platform, with the exception of YouTube, which is used regularly for news by 23% of U.S. adults.
Tomi Engdahl says:
To every moron decrying the loss of your freedom of speech rights, the first amendment prevents the government from prosecuting you for political speech. It doesn’t guarantee you a forum to spout ignorance and misinformation.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Ethics Matter For Social Media, Silicon Valley And Every Tech Industry Leader
http://on.forbes.com/6180Hk15E
At one time, the idea of technology and social media significantly influencing society and politics would’ve sounded crazy. Now, with technology so embedded into the fabric of our lives, it’s a reality that raises legitimate questions about Silicon Valley’s ethical responsibility.
Should tech companies step in to create and enforce guidelines within their platforms if they believe such policies would help the greater good? Or should leaders allow their technology to evolve organically without filters or manipulation?
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://medium.com/curiouserinstitute/a-game-designers-analysis-of-qanon-580972548be5
Tomi Engdahl says:
The 15 most notable lies of Donald Trump’s presidency
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/16/politics/fact-check-dale-top-15-donald-trump-lies/index.html
Trying to pick the most notable lies from Donald Trump’s presidency is like trying to pick the most notable pieces of junk from the town dump.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How News Media is Describing the Incident at the U.S. Capitol
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/how-news-media-is-describing-the-incident-at-the-u-s-capitol/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cryptocat author gets insanely fast backing to build P2P tech for social media
https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/18/cryptocat-author-gets-insanely-fast-backing-to-build-p2p-tech-for-social-media/?tpcc=ECFB2021
The idea for Capsule started with a tweet about reinventing social media.
The nascent startup has a post-money valuation on paper of $10M, according to Kobeissi, who is working on the prototype — hoping to launch an MVP of Capsule in March (as a web app), after which he intends to raise a seed round (targeting $1M-$1.5M) to build out a team and start developing mobile apps.
For now there’s nothing to see beyond Capsule’s landing page and a pitch deck (which he shared with TechCrunch for review). But Kobeissi says he was startled by the level of interest in the concept.
https://capsule.social/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Capsule is just the latest contender for retooling Internet power structures by building infrastructure that radically decentralizes social platforms to make speech more resilient to corporate censorship and control.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/18/cryptocat-author-gets-insanely-fast-backing-to-build-p2p-tech-for-social-media/?tpcc=ECFB2021
Tomi Engdahl says:
Joanna Stern / Wall Street Journal:
Social media algorithms amplify the reach of incendiary, misinformation-filled, conspiracy theories, and users have no control over them — What you see in your feeds isn’t up to you. What’s at stake is no longer just missing a birthday. It’s your sanity—and world peace.
Social-Media Algorithms Rule How We See the World. Good Luck Trying to Stop Them.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/social-media-algorithms-rule-how-we-see-the-world-good-luck-trying-to-stop-them-11610884800?mod=djemalertNEWS
What you see in your feeds isn’t up to you. What’s at stake is no longer just missing a birthday. It’s your sanity—and world peace.
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when we lost control of what we see, read—and even think—to the biggest social-media companies.
I put it right around 2016. That was the year Twitter and Instagram joined Facebook and YouTube in the algorithmic future. Ruled by robots programmed to keep our attention as long as possible, they promoted stuff we’d most likely tap, share or heart—and buried everything else.
Bye-bye, feeds that showed everything and everyone we followed in an unending, chronologically ordered river. Hello, high-energy feeds that popped with must-clicks.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Benedict Evans:
Social platforms are neither communication services nor publishers, and society will have to evolve new norms to regulate speech on them
Online speech and publishing
https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2021/1/17/speech-and-publishing
Tomi Engdahl says:
Joan Donovan / HBR.org:
The dominant business model of social media platforms, which emphasizes scale over everything else, makes them particularly vulnerable to disinformation
How Social Media’s Obsession with Scale Supercharged Disinformation
https://hbr.org/2021/01/how-social-medias-obsession-with-scale-supercharged-disinformation
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cory Doctrow has a interesting analysis of how the rightwing’s bloody mindedness led to their own mass silencing. The RWNJ of the US would live in a PERFECT society if only there weren’t other people they constantly have to struggle against.
Study today indicates that the 70% of social media disinformation about the 2020 election stopped with the social medias’ ban of trump.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cory Doctrow has a interesting analysis of how the rightwing’s bloody mindedness led to their own mass silencing. The RWNJ of the US would live in a PERFECT society if only there weren’t other people they constantly have to struggle against.
Study today indicates that the 70% of social media disinformation about the 2020 election stopped with the social medias’ ban of trump.
https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/17/turner-diaries-fanfic/#1a-fiber
With the deplatforming of forums where trumpists and right-wing figures congregate, there’s a lot of chatter about whether and when private entities have the right to remove speech, and what obligations come with scale.
The most important – and overlooked – area of this discourse is the role that monopoly plays, and the role that anti-monopoly enforcement could play.
In short, the fact that being removed from Twitter and the app stores and Facebook and Amazon is so devastating is best addressed by weakening those companies by spreading out our digital life onto lots of platforms.
Not by strengthening them by giving them formal duties to either carry or remove speech based on its content. These duties will justify all kinds of anticompetitive activity, because only a very profitable company can afford to fulfil them.
Competition in the platforms is important, but it’s not the whole story. The First Amendment was drafted for newspapers, and most contemporary communications law comes from broadcast and cable regulation. The internet is not a newspaper or a TV station, after all.
The biggest difference between a world where we are locked indoors and connect to one another via the internet and the world we left behind is that there are no public spaces on the internet.
If a cafe kicks you out for your speech, you can picket the public right of way out front. If Twitter kicks you out for your views, you have no constitutionally guaranteed right to stand at its digital threshold and tell everyone who enters or leaves that you got a raw deal.
Now, the state provision of digital services isn’t an unmitigated good. US governments at all levels have proven themselves to be utterly surveillance-addled, in thrall to the fallacy that spying on everyone will make us all safer.
But surveillance fears aren’t why we lack democratically controlled tech. For that, you can thank the same right wingers who are so exorcised about deplatforming today, who, for a decade, have been the useful idiots of telcoms monopolists in the fight over public broadband.
American cable and telco monopolists have divided up the country so that the best most of us can hope for is a duopoly, while many others are burdened with monopoly carriers, and millions live in broadband deserts with no high-speed internet at all.
The poorer you are, the more your broadband costs and the worse it is. The more rural you are, the worse your broadband is and the more it costs.
In a competitive market, companies would have improved service and lowered prices to compete. Luckily (for monopolists), there’s a cheaper solution: buy off state legislatures so they pass laws banning municipal broadband.
These laws were promulgated to GOP-dominated statehouses across the country, passed by right wing lawmakers who told their constituents they were “keeping government out of the internet.”
Which brings me back to the First Amendment and public sidewalks. All those people who are trying to find a way to support the “free market†” and also justify demanding that dominant platforms be ordered to carry their speech are living in a hell of their own making.
†Adam Smith popularized the term “free markets” to describe markets free from “rentiers” who collect money without adding value…such as cable monopolists. He definitely didn’t mean “markets free from government regulation.”
Because here’s the thing: your ISP – and Twitter, and Facebook, and Amazon – is a private company. It is not subject to the First Amendment. It can have any rules it wants about which lawful speech it will tolerate. It can sling your ass out the door on a whim.
You know who’s bound by the First Amendment? You know who can’t suppress your speech based on its content? You know who has to answer public records requests about why you got booted out of its service?
Your local government.
If you had a $70/month, 100GB fiber in your rural house, you could run a kickass P2P messaging server, and while you’d be right to worry about (covert, illegal) government surveillance (use encryption, kids) on that line, you would 100% have recourse if you got booted off.
It’s not an automatic home run. The First Amendment has exceptions, even beyond “time and manner,” and has been substantially eroded by GW Bush and his successors, in the name of fighting terror, animal rights activists and water defenders.
But a lawsuit against your town council for nuking your Turner Diaries fanfic server is a hell of a lot more likely to succeed than griping about Twitter mods failing to grasp the “irony” in your Auschwitz jokes.
The current system serves about 300 senior execs at telco monopolists, and a few thousand investors, and savagely fucks over everyone else. Even rich people in big cities usually can’t buy fiber at any price.
Tomi Engdahl says:
What ‘Democracy’ Is Under Attack? Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2021/01/18/what-democracy-is-under-attack-notes-from-the-edge-of-the-narrative-matrix/
To stop the exacerbation of Trumpism the talking heads are recommending internet censorship, regulations on media, new domestic terror laws, literally anything they can possibly think of except changing the conditions which gave rise to Trumpism.
The most imminent threat to US democracy is not Russia, nor fascist insurrectionists, but the fact that US democracy is entirely fictional.
Saying US democracy is being threatened is like saying Grinches are a critically endangered species.
The previous president intervened in the primary to appoint his right-hand man as his chosen successor. That successor will be installed in a five-day, star-studded celebration surrounded by a sea of barbed wire and heavily armed soldiers. What “democracy” is under attack, exactly?
No, the Capitol riot was not “karma” for America’s international coups and regime change interventions.
We now know for a fact that monopolistic Silicon Valley megacorporations can be pressured by the plutocrat-controlled political/media class to silence political factions online. Good thing there’s no way this can possibly go wrong.
When you realize that corporations are America’s real government, the whole “it isn’t censorship if it’s a private company doing it” argument is seen for the joke that it is. It’s also completely specious, because the government is directly involved in the censorship.
Soon social media will just be an app that sends everything you say to the FBI and gives you regular notifications that the government is your friend, and then everyone will finally be happy.
Back before he was silenced Assange tweeted “The overwhelming majority of information is classified to protect political security, not national security.”
I think of this quote often.
The mass media have earned every bit of the contempt the public has for them. Every little bit of it.
Rightists suck at conspiracy analysis because their worldview requires an elite cabal planning and orchestrating all evil dynamics, whereas leftists understand that many (though not all) of those dynamics will unfold on their own in a system where human behavior is driven by profit-seeking. In situations where you are ideologically prohibited from blaming the obvious culprit capitalism, you’ll come up with all kinds of other wacky explanations.
The best most reliable way to accurately predict what will happen in a given situation is to ignore whatever laws, trends and dynamics everyone else is pointing at and just assume the most powerful people will find a way to get whatever it is they want somehow. Doesn’t mean elites always win, and it certainly doesn’t mean we should stop fighting. It’s just the most reliable way to accurately guess what will happen in a given situation, if you’re into that sort of thing.
Sectarian feuds in the online left always boil down to “the whole system is rigged against the people” lefties versus “we can work with the oligarchic empire to advance our interests” lefties.
The US empire has two faces: the plastic smiling one based in Hollywood, and the blood-spattered one based in DC, Arlington and Langley. If you live in wealthy western nations you’re presented with the former. If you live in the Middle East or the Global South you get the latter.
If a political party always succeeds at advancing sick agendas and always fails at advancing healthy agendas, it’s because it only exists to advance sick agendas.
A lot of revolutionary-minded types get a sense of coolness and specialness from their marginalized ideology. It makes them feel good to be uniquely right about things. But that attitude will actually get in the way if your goals are attained and your views become mainstream.