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.
2,194 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://medium.com/@ajmcwhinney/post-irony-memes-media-consumption-93f3ce5759db
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.wepardi.fi/2023/04/17/immunifyav/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.hurja.fi/palvelut/maksuton-verkkosivujen-testaus/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.facebook.com/business/m/exit-learning-phase?content_id=JsRT54CoolTGBqS&ad_id=23852835157490708&campaign_id=23852834846810708
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.kolster.fi/blog/t%C3%A4sm%C3%A4suojaa-br%C3%A4ndisi
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://digikaupat.fi/pages/verkkokaupan-myynnin-kasvattaminen
Tomi Engdahl says:
John Herrman / New York Magazine:
The death of BuzzFeed News and the pivots to nowhere by bloated social media giants show the absurdity of the news media marrying a speculative tech industry
— The media bet its future on Facebook. Did it learn from that mistake? — BuzzFeed, the archetypal new media company of the 2010s …
The News Went Viral The media bet its future on Facebook. Did it learn from that mistake?
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/04/how-buzzfeed-news-went-bust.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Elon Musk / @elonmusk:
Elon Musk claims that Twitter plans to let media publishers charge users on a per-article basis, with one click, starting in May 2023 — Rolling out next month, this platform will allow media publishers to charge users on a per article basis with one click. This enables users who would not sign up for a monthly subscription to pay a higher per article price for when they want to read an occasional article…. https://twitter.com/…
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1652349875017879552
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/27/the-modern-www-or-where-do-we-want-to-go-from-here/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Too often when a company has a “Contact Us” page on their website, the page doesn’t actually offer any way to contact them, just answers to most common support questions.
So it’s an anti-contact page, to make customers not contact them.
Which is better, making it hard to contact them (which is what many of them really want) OR having a contact form that spams an email account that really isn’t read at all (like info@xyz) giving false impression that you CAN, in fact, contact them? I think many companies add the “contact us” page in false thinking that it is a required page (for SEO purposes at least) and their rankings would somehow be affected (based on some google guidelines).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google will remove secure website indicators in Chrome 117 https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/google/google-will-remove-secure-website-indicators-in-chrome-117/
Google announced today that the lock icon, long thought to be a sign of website security and trustworthiness, will soon be changed with a new icon that doesnt imply that a site is secure or should be trusted.
While first introduced to show that a website was using HTTPS encryption to encrypt connections, the lock symbol is no longer needed given that more than 99% of all web pages are now loaded in Google Chrome over HTTPS. These also include websites used as landing pages in phishing attacks or other malicious purposes, designed to take advantage of the lock icon to trick the targets into thinking they’re safe from attacks
Tomi Engdahl says:
So long passwords, thanks for all the phish https://security.googleblog.com/2023/05/so-long-passwords-thanks-for-all-phish.html
Starting today, you can create and use passkeys on your personal Google Account. When you do, Google will not ask for your password or 2-Step Verification (2SV) when you sign in. Passkeys are a more convenient and safer alternative to passwords. They work on all major platforms and browsers, and allow users to sign in by unlocking their computer or mobile device with their fingerprint, face recognition or a local PIN. Using passwords puts a lot of responsibility on users.
Choosing strong passwords and remembering them across various accounts can be hard. In addition, even the most savvy users are often misled into giving them up during phishing attempts. 2SV (2FA/MFA) helps, but again puts strain on the user with additional, unwanted friction and still doesnt fully protect against phishing attacks and targeted attacks like “SIM swaps” for SMS verification. Passkeys help address all these issues
Passkeys are the new standard to authenticate on the web https://www.passkeys.com/ Passkeys are a new way to sign in without passwords. With Touch ID and Face ID, passkeys are more secure and easier to use than passwords and any current two-factor authentication methods. Passkeys provide users a passwordless sign-in experience that is both more convenient and more secure. In a sense, Passkeys are similar to MFA, it’s a combination of something you have and something you are (your Face ID or Fingerprint). Different from passwords, Passkeys are resistant to phishing, are always strong, and they are not shared or stored on different databases. When a user sets up a passkey, a key is generated and synchronized to the cloud. When the user connects from another device in the same ecosystem, it will use the same key. Each time a passkey is being authenticated, a unique signature is generated, which expires within minutes
Passkeys Support Added to Google Accounts for Passwordless Sign-Ins
https://www.securityweek.com/passkeys-support-added-to-google-accounts-for-passwordless-sign-ins/
Google has added passkeys support to Google accounts on all major platforms as part of the company’s passwordless sign-in efforts.
Google announced on Wednesday that users can now sign into their Google account using passkeys. The move is part of the company’s efforts towards passwordless authentication.
Unlike passwords, which can be compromised in phishing attacks, passkeys cannot be written down or stolen by threat actors. Passkeys are also more convenient because they make the login process easier, including by skipping the two-factor authentication (2FA) step.
Passkeys are stored on the user’s device and presented to Google to verify the user’s identity when they log in. Instead of entering a password, users are required to simply unlock their phone or computer using an authentication method such as a local PIN, fingerprint, or face recognition.
A passkey is a cryptographic private key whose corresponding public key is in Google’s possession. The passkey is unlocked locally and biometric data is not shared with Google or anyone else.
Google provides a simple explanation for how passkeys work:
https://security.googleblog.com/2023/05/so-long-passwords-thanks-for-all-phish.html
“When you sign in we ask your device to sign a unique challenge with the private key. Your device only does so if you approve this by unlocking the device. We then verify the signature with your public key.
Your device also ensures the signature can only be shared with Google websites and apps, and not with malicious phishing intermediaries. This means you don’t have to be as watchful with where you use passkeys as you would with passwords, SMS verification codes, etc.
This signature proves to us that the device is yours since it has the private key, that you were there to unlock it, and that you are actually trying to sign in to Google and not some intermediary phishing site. The only data shared with Google for this to work is the public key and the signature. Neither contains any information about your biometrics.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lauren Feiner / CNBC:
The FTC proposes barring Meta from monetizing kids’ data, accusing the company of violating a 2020 order with its privacy program and COPPA with Messenger Kids — – The Federal Trade Commission proposed to bar Facebook parent company Meta from monetizing kids’ data after it says the company violated …
FTC proposes barring Meta from monetizing kids’ data
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/03/ftc-proposes-barring-meta-from-monetizing-kids-data.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google adds blue checkmarks to Gmail for senders from verified brands that adopted the company’s Brand Indicators for Message Identification email specification — After adding support for verified brand logos in 2021, Gmail is now going further by adding a blue checkmark to emails.
Gmail is adding a blue checkmark to better verify senders
https://9to5google.com/2023/05/03/gmail-blue-checkmark/
After adding support for verified brand logos in 2021, Gmail is now going further by adding a blue checkmark to emails.
The existing system is based on the Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI) standard, where brand logos appear in the “avatar slot” next to the sender’s name and address. For example, instead of a generic “B” against a plain background, Bank of America can show its official flag logo.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sam Jabri-Pickett / Reuters:
Google and Meta executives say their platforms would withdraw access to news articles in Canada if the proposed Online News Act is passed
Google, Meta executives push back against Canada online news bill
https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/canada-online-news-bill-is-unreasonable-google-executive-says-2023-05-03/
TORONTO, May 3 (Reuters) – Google and Meta would withdraw access to news articles in Canada if legislation compelling internet companies to pay news publishers is passed, company executives told Canadian lawmakers on Wednesday.
Canada’s proposed legislation would force platforms like Google parent Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) and Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) to negotiate commercial deals and pay Canadian news publishers for their content, part of a broader global trend to make tech firms pay for news.
Google may be forced to remove links to news articles found in Canadian search results if the bill passes, its vice president of news Richard Gingras said in testimony to a Senate committee, citing an “uncapped financial liability” if it had to pay publishers for linking to their sites.
Meta would also end the availability of news content in Canada if the bill is passed as currently drafted, said Rachel Curran, head of public policy for Meta in Canada.
Ottawa’s proposal is similar to a ground-breaking law that Australia passed in 2021, which also triggered threats from Google and Facebook to curtail their services. Both eventually struck deals with Australian media companies after amendments to the legislation were offered.
This year, Google tested blocking some Canadian users’ access to news as a potential response to the legislation, a move Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called a “terrible mistake.”
Google last year linked to Canadian news publishers more than 3.6 billion times, Gingras said, helping those companies make money on ads and new subscriptions.
Curran said Facebook feeds sent Canadian publishers more than 1.9 billion clicks in the 12 months ending April 2022, worth an estimated $230 million in free marketing.
“A framework that requires us to compensate publishers for links or news content they voluntarily put on our platforms is unworkable,” Curran said.
The bill introduced in April 2022 by Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez is the latest legislation aiming to make digital media platforms pay for linking news content.
“All we’re asking the tech giants like Facebook and Google to do is negotiate fair deals with news outlets when they profit from their work,” Heritage Ministry spokesperson Laura Scaffidi said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
Google plans to change Chrome’s URL bar lock icon, introduced to signify HTTPS, to a “variant of the tune icon”, because “nearly all phishing sites use HTTPS” — Google announced today that the lock icon, long thought to be a sign of website security and trustworthiness …
Google will remove secure website indicators in Chrome 117
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/google/google-will-remove-secure-website-indicators-in-chrome-117/
Google announced today that the lock icon, long thought to be a sign of website security and trustworthiness, will soon be changed with a new icon that doesn’t imply that a site is secure or should be trusted.
While first introduced to show that a website was using HTTPS encryption to encrypt connections, the lock symbol is no longer needed given that more than 99% of all web pages are now loaded in Google Chrome over HTTPS.
These also include websites used as landing pages in phishing attacks or other malicious purposes, designed to take advantage of the lock icon to trick the targets into thinking they’re safe from attacks.
Shubham S says:
“It’s all about the ‘LTV,’ the lifetime value of a given user,” said Mae Karwowski, the CEO and founder of Obviously, a social media influencer marketing firm. “You always need to make sure you’re catering to younger and younger people so that you don’t phase out or become perceived as an app for older people.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
David Pierce / The Verge:
Mozilla expands its Mastodon instance to a private beta with strict moderation, saying the company is “not building another self-declared ‘neutral’ platform” — If you want to be a member of Mozilla.Social, Mozilla’s new Mastodon instance, you’re not allowed to harass other users.
More: The Mozilla Blog, TechCrunch, and BGR
Mozilla’s setting up shop on Mastodon and trying to reinvent content moderation / It’s a social network that doesn’t try to be neutral and isn’t attempting to preserve free speech. It’s trying to make the internet a nicer place to be.
https://www.theverge.com/23710406/mozilla-social-mastodon-fediverse-moderation
Tomi Engdahl says:
It’s getting weird out there. We almost seem to be living in a post-satire era, where fact and fiction feel so interchangeable that it can be hard to tell what’s news and what’s a well-written joke. When The Onion starts feeling more accurate than The New York Times, it’s hard to tell which end is up, and media literacy is at an all-time low. That means satire is being read completely straight, and while that’s nothing new (remember “Fight Club”?), it does feel pretty scary.
Read More: https://www.slashfilm.com/1278671/vicious-satire-starship-troopers-too-smart-its-own-good/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Amazon expands Inspire, its TikTok-like video and photo feed in the Shopping app that lets users buy from influencer and brand content, to all US customers
Amazon’s TikTok-like Inspire shopping feed is now available to all customers in the US
https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/05/amazons-tiktok-like-inspire-shopping-feed-available-all-customers-us/
Amazon’s in-app TikTok-like shopping feed is now available to all customers in the United States, according to the company’s website. The feature rolled out to select U.S. customers in December after Amazon had been spotted experimenting with a TikTok-like shopping feed last summer.
The new short-form video and photo feed allows consumers to explore products and ideas and shop from content created by influencers, brands and other customers.
To get started with Inspire, you have to open the Amazon Shopping app, sign in to your account and then tap the Inspire “light bulb” icon on the bottom navigation bar. You will then be prompted to choose from over 20 interests, including categories like makeup, skin care, pets, gaming, plants, hiking, interior design, travel, running and more to personalize your Inspire feed.
You can double-tap anywhere on the screen to “like” the content you see.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Benjamin Mullin / New York Times:
Images of a Texas mall mass shooting go viral on Twitter, fueling criticism of its reduced moderation; Twitter allows some graphic posts like Ukraine war images — Graphic images of the attack went viral on the platform, which has made cuts to its moderation team.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/07/business/media/texas-shooting-video-twitter.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Miles Kruppa / Wall Street Journal:
Documents: Google plans to make search more “visual, snackable, personal, and human”, adding more short videos, more social media posts, and AI conversations — Changes aim to respond to queries that can’t be easily answered by traditional ‘10 blue links’ web results
Google Plans to Make Search More ‘Personal’ with AI Chat and Video Clips
Changes aim to respond to queries that can’t be easily answered by traditional ‘10 blue links’ web results
https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-search-ai-artificial-intelligence-chatbot-tiktok-67c08870?mod=djemalertNEWS
Google is shifting the way it presents search results to incorporate conversations with artificial intelligence, along with more short video and social-media posts, a departure from the list of website results that has made it the dominant search engine for decades.
The changes represent a response to big shifts in the way people access information on the internet, including the emergence of AI bots like ChatGPT. They would nudge the service further away from its traditional format, known informally as the “10 blue links,” according to company documents and people familiar with the matter.
Google plans to make its search engine more “visual, snackable, personal, and human,” with a focus on serving young people globally, according to the documents.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Taylor Hatmaker / TechCrunch:
Scammers appear to be hacking verified Meta accounts to impersonate the company and run Facebook ads asking users to download shady tools likely with malware — Sketchy Facebook pages impersonating businesses are nothing new, but a flurry of recent scams is particularly brazen.
Hacked verified Facebook pages impersonating Meta are buying ads from Meta
https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/05/hacked-verified-facebook-pages-impersonating-meta-are-buying-ads-from-meta/
Sketchy Facebook pages impersonating businesses are nothing new, but a flurry of recent scams is particularly brazen.
A handful of verified Facebook pages were hacked recently and spotted slinging likely malware through ads approved by and purchased through the platform. But the accounts should be easy to catch — in some cases, they were impersonating Facebook itself.
Social consultant Matt Navarra first spotted some of the ads, sharing them on Twitter. The compromised accounts include official-sounding pages like “Meta Ads” and “Meta Ads Manager.” Those accounts shared suspicious links to tens of thousands of followers, though their reach probably extended well beyond that through paid posts.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Will Oremus / Washington Post:
AI text generators are quietly authoring more of the internet; more AI-generated books and personalized articles mean fewer clients buying human-written content
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/05/05/ai-spam-websites-books-chatgpt/
Tomi Engdahl says:
David Pierce / The Verge:
How Google’s attempt to create a better, faster mobile web for media companies with the AMP standard ended up ruining publishers’ trust in the internet giant
Speed Trap
https://www.theverge.com/23711172/google-amp-accelerated-mobile-pages-search-publishers-lawsuit
Google promised to create a better, faster web for media companies with a new standard called AMP. In the end, it ruined the trust publishers had in the internet giant.
In 2015, Google hatched a plan to save the mobile web by effectively taking it over. And for a while, the media industry had practically no choice but to play along.
It began on a cheery October morning in New York City; the company had gathered the press together at a buzzy breakfast spot named Sadelle’s in SoHo. As the assembled reporters ate their bagels and lox, Google’s vice president of news, Richard Gingras, explained that the open web was in crisis. Sites were too slow, too hard to use, too filled with ads. As a result, he warned, people were flocking to the better experiences offered by social platforms and app stores. If this trend continued, it would be the end of the web as we know it.
But Google had a plan to fight back: Accelerated Mobile Pages, or AMP, a new format for designing mobile-first webpages. AMP would ensure that the mobile web could be as fast, as usable, instantly loading, and every bit as popular as mobile apps. “We are here to make sure that the web evolves, and our entire focus is on that effort,” Gingras said. “We are here to make the web great again.”
“Make the web great again” was a popular phrase across Google at the time, echoing the burgeoning presidential campaign of an upstart Republican named Donald Trump. There was a lot of technical work behind the slogan: Google was building its own Chrome browser into a viable web-first operating system for laptops; trying to replace native apps with Progressive Web Apps; pushing to make the more secure HTTPS standard across the web; and promoting new top-level domains that would aim to make .blog and .pizza as important as .com. Much of this was boring or went over the heads of media execs. The point was that Google was promising to wrest distribution power away from Apple and Facebook and back into the hands of publishers.
After a decade of newspapers disappearing, magazine circulations shrinking, and websites’ business dwindling, the media industry had become resigned to its own powerlessness. Even the most cynical publishers had grown used to playing whatever games platforms like Google and Facebook demanded in a quest for traffic. And as Facebook chaotically pivoted to video, that left Google as the overwhelming driver of traffic to websites all over the web. What choice did anyone have?
“If Google said, ‘you must have your homepage colored bright pink on Tuesdays to be the result in Google,’ everybody would do it, because that’s what they need to do to survive,” says Terence Eden, a web standards expert and a former member of the Google AMP Advisory Committee.
Adopting Google’s strange new version of the web resulted in an irresistible flood of traffic for publishers at first: using AMP increased search traffic to one major national magazine’s site by 20 percent, according to the executive who oversaw the implementation.
But AMP came with huge tradeoffs, most notably around how all those webpages were monetized. AMP made it harder to use ad tech that didn’t come from Google, fraying the relationship between Google and the media so badly that AMP became a key component in an antitrust lawsuit filed just five years after its launch in 2020 by 17 state attorneys general, accusing Google of maintaining an illegal monopoly on the advertising industry. The states argue that Google designed AMP in part to thwart publishers from using alternative ad tools — tools that would have generated more money for publishers and less for Google.
Another lawsuit, filed in January 2023 by the US Justice Department, went even further, alleging that Google envisioned AMP as “an effort to push parts of the open web into a Google-controlled walled garden, one where Google could dictate more directly how digital advertising space could be sold.”
Here in 2023, AMP seems to have faded away. Most publishers have started dropping support, and even Google doesn’t seem to care much anymore. The rise of ChatGPT and other AI services pose a much more direct threat to its search business than Facebook Instant Articles and Apple News ever did. But the media industry is still dependent on Google’s fire hose of traffic
AMP succeeded spectacularly. Then it failed. And to anyone looking for a reason not to trust the biggest company on the internet, AMP’s story contains all the evidence you’ll ever need.
The small-screen shake-up
Earlier in 2015, months before AMP launched, one of Google’s key metrics was on the verge of a dramatic flip: the volume of searches coming from mobile phones was just about to outnumber the ones coming from desktop and laptop computers. This shift had been a long time coming, and Google saw it as an existential threat. The company had become a nearly $75 billion annual business almost entirely on ads — which made up about 90 percent of its revenue — and the most important ones by far were the ones atop search results in desktop browsers.
In public, Google framed AMP as something like a civic mission, an attempt to keep the web open and accessible to everyone instead of moving to closed gardens like Facebook Instant Articles or Apple News, which offered superior mobile reading experiences. “To some degree, on mobile, [the web] has not fully satisfied users’ expectations,” Gingras said at the launch event. “We are hoping to change that.”
But the fight to fix the mobile web wasn’t just an altruistic move in the name of teamwork and openness and kumbaya. Internally, some viewed it as a battle for Google’s own survival. As smartphones became the default browsing experience for billions of users around the world, the mobile web was becoming the only web that really mattered. Google’s competitors were exerting far more control over how users lived their lives on their phones: readers were getting their news from native apps and from proprietary formats created by Facebook and Apple. Google worried that if enough users switched to these faster, simpler, more controlled experiences, it risked being left out altogether.
As Big Tech companies took over the ad industry, it did so largely at the expense of publishers. Newspapers used to be the way to advertise your new hair salon, or you might buy local TV ads to hawk the latest appliances for sale in your store. By 2015, most advertisers just went through Facebook and Google, which offered a more targeted and more efficient way to reach buyers.
This “we care about publishers!” dance is a staple of Silicon Valley. Apple briefly promised to save the news business with the iPad, convincing publishers around the world to build bespoke tablet magazines before mostly abandoning that project. Facebook remains in a perpetually whipsawing relationship with the media, too: it will promote stories in the News Feed only to later demote them in favor of “Meaningful Social Interactions,” then promise publishers endless video eyeballs before mostly giving up on Facebook Watch.
The platforms need content to keep users entertained and engaged; publishers need distribution for their content to be seen. At best, it’s a perfectly symbiotic relationship. At worst, and all too often, the platforms simply cajole publishers into doing whatever the platforms need to increase engagement that quarter.
For publishers over the last decade, chasing platform policies and supporting new products has become the only means of survival. “That’s the sort of tradeoff publishers are used to,”
But the big reason for consternation within Google was a company just a few miles down the road. If mobile was going to win, then so was Facebook. This was pre-metaverse Facebook
Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg made no secret of Facebook’s ambitions to take on Google, to take on everybody, really: the CEO’s aim was to turn Facebook into a platform the size of the internet. But he wanted to win at search, too, first by better indexing Facebook content and then by ultimately doing the same to the web. “
Seeing the rise of social networking, and the threat that friend-sourced content posed to Google’s search-based business model, the company poured resources into the Google Plus social network. But it never caught on and, by 2015, was effectively on its last legs. There was simply no way to out-Facebook Facebook.
Around the same time, Facebook also launched Instant Articles, a Facebook-specific tool that turned web articles into native posts on the platform. The pitch for Instant Articles was simple: they would speed up the News Feed, making it quicker to read stories so users didn’t have to suffer through the mobile web’s interminable load times and hideous pages. Instant Articles made some publishers nervous since it effectively loaded their content directly onto Facebook’s platform and gave the company complete control over their audiences.
A few months later, Apple launched Apple News, its own proprietary article format and app for displaying publisher content.
The media industry, collectively, bought the hype around what came to be known as “distributed publishing.” “Is the media becoming a wire service?” asked Ezra Klein at Vox in a piece that kicked off a million AMP and Instant Articles projects. “My guess is that within three years, it will be normal for news organizations of even modest scale to be publishing to some combination of their own websites, a separate mobile app, Facebook Instant Articles, Apple News, Snapchat, RSS, Facebook Video, Twitter Video, YouTube, Flipboard, and at least one or two major players yet to be named,” he wrote. “The biggest publishers will be publishing to all of these simultaneously.”
To some at Google, all of this looked a lot like a few proprietary platforms conspiring to kill the open web. Which might kill Google. Search — and its behemoth ad business — only worked if the web was full of open, indexable pages that its search crawlers could see and direct users to
In May 2015, at the first Newsgeist Europe in Helsinki, Finland, Instant Articles was a topic of much conversation
Ultimately, what the company built was AMP. Done right, it could bring the same speed, simplicity, and design to the entire internet — without closing it off.
At least, that’s how Google described it publicly. According to interviews with former employees, publishing executives, and experts associated with the early days of AMP, while it was waxing poetic about the value and future of the open web, Google was privately urging publishers into handing over near-total control of how their articles worked and looked and monetized. And it was wielding the web’s most powerful real estate — the top of search results — to get its way.
“[Google] came to us and said, the internet is broken, ads aren’t loading, blah blah, blah. We want to provide a better user experience to users by coming up with this clean standard,” says one magazine product executive. “My reaction was that the main problem is ads, so why don’t you fix the ads? They said they can’t fix the ads. It’s too hard.”
Faster, faster, faster
Before it was called AMP, Google’s nascent web standard was known as PCU — Portable Content Unit. The team of Googlers building the new format had only one goal, or at least only one that mattered: make webpages faster. There were lots of other goals, like giving publishers monetization and branding options, but all of that was secondary to load times. If the page appeared instantly after a user tapped the link in search results, AMP would feel as instant and native as an app. Nothing else mattered as much as speed.
Google had tried in the past to incentivize publishers to make their own webpages faster. Load times had long been a factor in how the search engine ranked sites on desktop, for instance, and load times were presented front and center in Google Analytics.
And yet, the mobile web still, in a word, sucked. “Publishers, frankly, then — and to a great degree still now — considered mobile web traffic to be essentially junk traffic,”
Many mobile websites were completely separate entities from their desktop pages, prefaced with “mobile.” or “m.” in their URLs. Publishers compensated for small screens with more ads per page, and the whole industry was in the midst of an unfortunate obsession with autoplaying video. Phone browsers were bad; the webpages were even worse.
Google didn’t have great tools for understanding mobile pages at the time, so it couldn’t easily issue the same “we just like fast pages” edict.
Google felt it needed a solution immediately. Competition was here. AMP was a blunt object, but it was designed to get results quickly. AMP’s purpose, Google’s Gingras said at the 2015 launch event, “is about making sure the World Wide Web is not the World Wide Wait.”
AMP was, in many ways, a step backward for the web. Nieman Lab’s Joshua Benton noted at the time that Google’s sample AMP-powered webpages “look a lot like the web of, say, 2002, shrunk down to a phone screen.”
But it was fast. And to Google, that was all that mattered.
For AMP to work, Google knew it needed to get broad adoption. But simply asking publishers to support a new standard wouldn’t be easy. Publishers were already neglecting their mobile websites, which was the whole problem, and they weren’t likely to sign up to work on them just for Google’s benefit.
The team tried a few things to get more AMP content, like auto-converting stories from the Google Play Newsstand and elsewhere. WordPress began working on a plug-in that made creating AMP pages as easy as checking a box every time you published a post.
What Google really needed was for publishers to not just support AMP but also embrace it.
The team quickly landed on a much more powerful growth hack: Google’s search results. It would be easy for Google to factor AMP into the way it ranks search results, to effectively tell publishers that AMP-powered pages would be higher on the list, and anything else would be pushed down the page. (It had previously done something similar with HTTPS, another push toward a new web standard.) Publishers, most of them existentially reliant on the fire hose of Google traffic, would have no choice but to give in and use AMP.
Such an aggressive move would be a bad look for Google, though, not to mention a potentially anti-competitive one, especially given that the company has always maintained it cares about a webpage’s “relevance” above all else. But there was a middle ground, or maybe a loophole: a relatively new product in Google search known as the Top Stories carousel, which showed a handful of horizontally scrolling news stories at the top of some search results pages.
“It felt faster because Google cheated.”
Google said from the beginning that AMP would not be a factor in regular “10 blue link” search results. (Several publishing executives say they’re still not sure if that was true: “when Google said AMP doesn’t matter, no one believes them,” one says. The company denies that it has ever been a factor in search result rankings.) But only AMP pages would be included in the carousel
That carousel took up most of the precious space on a phone screen, which made Top Stories some of the most important real estate on the mobile web. And so, the growth hack worked. When AMP launched in early 2016, a who’s who of publishers had signed up to support the new format: The Guardian, The Washington Post, BuzzFeed, the BBC, The New York Times, and Vox Media, The Verge’s parent company, all quickly began developing for AMP. Others would join in the months that followed.
But many of those publishers weren’t necessarily signing up because they believed in AMP’s vision or loved the tech. Far from it. Google’s relentless focus on page speed, and on shipping as quickly as possible to thwart Facebook and Apple, meant the first versions of AMP couldn’t do very much. It didn’t support comments or paywalls, and the restrictions on JavaScript meant publishers couldn’t bring in third-party analytics or advertising. Interactive elements, even simple things like tables and charts, mostly didn’t work.
AMP, it turned out, wasn’t even that fast. Multiple publishers ran internal tests and found they were able to make pages that loaded more quickly than AMP pages, so long as they were able to rein in the ad load and extra trackers. It was much harder to build slow pages on AMP — in part because AMP couldn’t do very much — but there were lots of other ways to build good pages.
“We built a standard, it’s shit, it’s terrible, it’s not ready, it does only like a quarter of what you need it to do.”
And even if AMP pages did seem to load faster from search results, “it felt faster because Google cheated,” says Barry Adams, a longtime SEO consultant. When publishers built AMP-powered pages, they submitted them to Google’s AMP Validator, which made sure the page worked right — and cleared it for access to the carousel. As it was checking the code, Google would grab a copy of the entire page and store it on Google’s own servers. Then, when someone clicked on the article in search results, rather than loading the webpage itself, Google would load its stored version. Any page pre-rendered like that would load faster, AMP or otherwise.
The AMP cache made it harder for publishers to quickly update their content — and made it nearly impossible for them to understand how people were using their sites. On cached pages, even the URL began with “google.com,” rather than the publisher’s own domain. It was as if Google had subsumed the entire publishing industry inside its office park in Mountain View.
“The problem was that when Google launched it, they also said, ‘You have to use AMP. We built a standard, it’s shit, it’s terrible, it’s not ready, it does only like a quarter of what you need it to do, but we need you to use it anyway because otherwise we’re just not going to show your articles in mobile search results anymore,’” Adams says. “And that is what ruffled everybody’s feathers.”
“The audience people hated it because it was against audience strategy,” says one former media executive who worked with AMP. “The data people hated it because it was against advertising and privacy strategy. The engineers hated it because it’s a horrendous format to work with… The analysts hated it because we got really bad behavioral data out of it. Everyone’s like, ‘Okay, so there’s no upside to this — apart from the traffic.’”
“Google’s strategy is always to create prisoner’s dilemmas that it controls — to create a system such that if only one person defects, then they win.”
On top of that, the traffic was worth less because it had fewer and more limited ads. “Every publisher experienced this — the AMP audience is less valuable. It’s millions of pennies and not having any dollars,” one executive says. “An AMP article earned 60 percent of what a [standard] article earned… It’s low enough to be noticeable. You were just playing the game of ‘if I didn’t have all this traffic, would I make more money?’”
“Google did not have an answer for the revenue gap — there was a lot of hand-waving, a lot of saying they would work with us,”
But the pageviews, in many cases, were enough to outweigh the costs. It’s almost impossible to overstate how important Google traffic is to most publishers.
Bigger media companies, those that could employ product and engineering staff of their own, could sometimes hack around AMP’s limitations — or, at the very least, deal with them without affecting the rest of the company’s business. Some big publishers came to see AMP as nothing more than some additional work required for a distributor. But even many smaller publishers, without the staff to manage the technical shortcomings or the resources to maintain yet another version of their website, still felt they had no choice but to support AMP.
As long as anyone played the game, everybody had to. “Google’s strategy is always to create prisoner’s dilemmas that it controls — to create a system such that if only one person defects, then they win,”
Many within Google continued to see AMP as a net good, a way to make the web better and to keep it from collapsing into a few walled gardens. But to most publishers, AMP was, at best, just another app to send stuff to. “We didn’t see it as any different from building on Android or building on iOS,” one former media executive says. “It was this way to deliver the best mobile experience.” Supporting AMP was like supporting Apple News, Facebook Instant Articles, or even maintaining RSS feeds. It was just more work for more platforms.
That’s why the Top Stories carousel felt like a shakedown to so many publishers. Google claimed it was merely an incentive to do the obviously right thing and a nice boost in the user experience. But publishers sensed an unspoken message: comply with this new format or risk your precious search traffic. And your entire business.
Despite all the issues with AMP’s tech and misgivings about Google’s intentions, the new format was a success from the very beginning.
AMP’s success was the web’s success, not Google’s.
In reality, Google exerted near-total authority over AMP.
Several sources told me stories of heated arguments about the future of the web that ended in Google employees awkwardly reading lawyer-approved statements about things being open and opt in — and Google then getting its way.
Over time, AMP began to support more ad networks — or, rather, more ad networks began to do the work required to support AMP’s locked-down structure. But many still felt the best experience was reserved for Google’s own ad tech.
“I have no doubt that the long-term play was to say, ‘We’re Google. This is a new language for the web. If you don’t like it, you’re not on the front page of Google anymore.’”
As AMP caught on, Google’s vision for the product became even more ambitious. The company started to suggest that, rather than maintain a website and a separate set of AMP pages, maybe some publishers should build their entire site within AMP.
It was the whole web, rewritten Google’s way and forever compatible with its search engine.
“I 100 percent believe that Google would have loved to have said AMP is the future of HTML,”
Ultimately, though, Google’s grandest ambitions didn’t come to pass. Neither did its smallest ambitions, really. As publishers continued to thrash against AMP’s constraints, and as overall scrutiny against Google ramped up, the company began to pull back.
The non-standard
In 2021, Google announced it would start featuring all pages in the Top Stories carousel, not just AMP-powered ones. Last May, Google let some local news providers for covid-related stories bypass this requirement. As soon as publishers didn’t have to use AMP anymore, they mostly stopped.
The true irony of AMP is that even as publishers are jumping off the platform, many also acknowledge that, actually, AMP is pretty good now. It supports comments and more interactive elements; it’s still fast and simple. Now that it’s run by the OpenJS Foundation and separated from the search results incentive, it appears to be on track to become a genuinely useful project. It’s not likely to replace HTML anytime soon, but it could help usher in the idea of portable and embeddable content that Jarvis and Gingras imagined all those years ago. Developers can even use AMP to make web-based projects that feel like Instagram Stories or the TikTok feed. “AMP potentially could have been — in some ways, I still think possibly could be — a really interesting way of syndicating content that takes that middle person out of the mix,” Pilhofer says.
“It maybe had good intentions about making the mobile web better,” Adams says, “but went about it in probably one of the worst ways you could have imagined. It was a PR nightmare.”
Google is still the web’s biggest and most influential company. But across the publishing industry, it’s no longer seen as a partner. AMP ultimately neither saved nor killed the open web. But it did kill Google’s good name — one not-that-fast webpage at a time.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
YouTube is running a “small experiment” globally that shows a pop-up urging users with ad blockers to allow ads on YouTube or consider subscribing to Premium — YouTube is running an experiment asking some users to disable their ad blockers or pay for a premium subscription, or they will not be allowed to watch videos.
YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/technology/youtube-tests-blocking-videos-unless-you-disable-ad-blockers/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Is About To Turn The Online Publishing Industry Upside Down
https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattnovak/2023/05/11/google-is-about-to-drop-a-nuclear-bomb-on-the-online-publishing-industry/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=forbes&utm_term=se-forbes&sh=52418ddf3faa
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kate King / Wall Street Journal:
Nearly half of online footwear, apparel, and accessories brands tracked by Coresight have expanded to physical stores due to rising digital advertising costs — Warby Parker planned to sell glasses online and shake up retailing. Now it’s discovered the value of real stores—900 of them, in fact.
Online-Only Startups Adopt a Bold New Strategy: Opening Actual Shops
https://www.wsj.com/articles/warby-parker-allbirds-everlane-parachute-collars-co-stores-e4b94623?mod=djemalertNEWS
Warby Parker planned to sell glasses online and shake up retailing. Now it’s discovered the value of real stores—900 of them, in fact.
When Warby Parker WRBY -1.39%decrease; red down pointing triangle
started selling eyeglasses online in 2010, the last thing its founders wanted was a lot of retail space.
Warby Parker’s business plan was to cut out the middlemen and sell directly to customers. That included avoiding landlords and their demands for long, expensive leases. Selling online was the cheapest way to reach as many customers as possible, as quickly as possible. And the founders were full-time business-school students, leery of borrowing money to build out shops.
The company is very different these days. Warby Parker had 200 stores in 36 states, Washington, D.C., and Canada at the end of 2022, which generated 60% of the company’s total sales. This year, it plans to add 40 more locations.
After years of shunning bricks-and-mortar in favor of e-commerce, even companies that started online have been signing leases. Helping drive the move, retailers said, is the fact that rising digital-advertising costs are making it more difficult and expensive to attract new customers online. Warby Parker’s executives, for example, said that when the company opens a physical location in a new market, online sales in the area roughly triple. Long term, they believe they could operate at least 900 U.S. stores.
“Retailers have determined that they have to have great retail real estate to make money,” said John Kite, chief executive of Kite Realty Group Trust, whose portfolio of 181 shopping centers is nearly 95% leased. “I’ve seen periods where you feel like you just can’t lease space. Right now it’s the exact opposite.”
The “golden age” of digitally native companies opening bricks-and-mortar stores spanned 2015 to 2018, said Sunny Zheng, a senior analyst at advisory and research firm Coresight Research. Today, the majority of digitally native beauty and home décor and furnishings brands have opened physical stores, showrooms or pop-ups, according to Coresight. Nearly half of online footwear, apparel and accessories brands tracked by Coresight have expanded to bricks-and-mortar.
Indeed, after the first months of the pandemic, it became clear that Americans still wanted to buy a lot of things—from bananas to makeup to couches—in person. More than 85% of total retail sales occurred in physical stores in 2022, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, only a slight decrease from prepandemic years.
Technological advances have given companies unprecedented levels of data such as foot traffic and customer locations. This enables retailers, especially those that started online, to pinpoint sites for successful new stores with greater accuracy than in earlier years. Behind the leases Warby Parker signs, for example, are years’ worth of data about where the retailer’s customers live and work.
“That’s a massive advantage of starting online,” said Co-CEO and Co-Founder Dave Gilboa. “We know where all of our customers are ordering home try-ons or they’re making their purchases.”
This data helped persuade Warby Parker to enter Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood, where it signed an 18-month lease in 2015. The area was gritty and didn’t have much retail, but the founders knew it was a magnet for young people who frequented its burgeoning bar and restaurant scene.
Bricks-and-mortar’s staying power has won over even online retail’s die-hards. Michael Preysman, founder of the digitally native apparel store Everlane, told the New York Times in 2012 that he’d rather shut the company down than open a physical location. Five years later, the company opened its first store in New York City. Mr. Preysman said in a 2019 CNBC interview that high online advertising and shipping costs made it impossible to be profitable without bricks-and-mortar. Everlane now has 11 stores open nationwide. Mr. Preysman declined to comment for this article.
The cost and diminishing returns of online advertising have helped push online brands to physical stores. In the early 2010s, many online retailers targeted potential customers with ads on Facebook, and then Instagram when it began widely selling ads in 2015, said Nikhil Lai, senior analyst at the research and advisory company Forrester. But digital advertising quickly became saturated, and within a few years online retailers felt they needed to try other avenues to acquire customers, including advertising on podcasts, television, traditional billboards and by opening physical stores, Mr. Lai said.
Digital advertising costs exploded during the pandemic, as people were stuck at home and companies shifted their marketing to screens. Apple’s decision in 2021 to allow phone users to opt out of tracking by apps such as Facebook further increased costs, Mr. Lai said, by making it more difficult for apps to gather data on consumers’ interests. That limits advertisers’ ability to efficiently target potential customers.
Online advertising costs have started to fall in recent quarters, according to Mr. Lai, but many online companies are still convinced that physical stores are key to growing their customer base.
“Glasses are one of the only things that people wear on their face. They have to look good,” Mr. Gilboa said. “And depending on your prescription, even 1 millimeter difference in terms of where the center of the lens is will impact your vision.”
“When we survey our potential customers and we ask, ‘Why haven’t you shopped with us?’ The No. 1 reason is there isn’t a store nearby,” co-founder and Co-CEO Neil Blumenthal said.
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Since most people buy glasses in the same location where they get their eye exams, Mr. Blumenthal said, all of Warby Parker’s new stores include eye-exam rooms. The company also draws people in by offering free repairs and adjustments, as well as a six-month scratch guarantee.
It’s a service New York City resident Tori Pierce has taken advantage of more than once, since her job working behind the scenes for “The Tonight Show” occasionally involves getting hit in the face with flying props.
She used to hold her glasses together with tape until traveling back to her native New Jersey to get a new pair from her optometrist. Then she started shopping at Warby Parker, which has a store near her office in Midtown.
“You could get your glasses fixed without an appointment, which is exactly what I was looking for because of how often I break my glasses or scratch them,” she said.
While she’s waiting, Ms. Pierce often looks around to see what new styles have come in. She now owns 11 pairs of Warby Parker frames. “Glasses are my favorite accessory,” she said.
Warby Parker’s stores are decorated with the brand’s light-blue and gray color palette.
Warby Parker’s vast knowledge about where its customers live and work helps the company pick new store locations.
“Over time, just looking at the data of where our customers are shopping both online and offline has been hugely beneficial in thinking through our overall real-estate strategy,” Mr. Gilboa said.
Even customers who try on and buy frames in-store typically give the company their home or work addresses so their prescription glasses can be mailed to them. Warby Parker executives look at this data to determine how far and from where customers are driving to shop in their stores.
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In California, for example, Warby Parker noticed that people were driving 30 to 40 miles to visit its San Diego outlet. This information prompted the company to open a store in Carlsbad, Calif., north of San Diego, in late 2021.
“We’re able to leverage both our e-commerce data and our in-store transaction data to really help inform the road map,” Mr. Gilboa said.
Today the startup is setting its sights on the suburbs, where its existing stores continue to outperform urban office corridors as remote work boosts foot traffic and sales. Warby Parker plans to open nearly all of its new stores in the suburbs this year, and has signed leases for space in outdoor shopping centers, stand-alone storefronts and enclosed malls.
Some have questioned whether customer growth will keep pace with Warby Parker’s ambitious expansion plans. Citi downgraded its recommendation for the company’s stock to neutral from buy on March 1. Analyst Paul Lejuez said average store sales of $2.1 million in 2022 for stores open more than 12 months fell short of the company’s original plan of $2.6 million and raises questions about whether the company can sustain hundreds of more stores as well as its e-commerce business.
“The economics are still good enough to warrant opening stores,” Mr. Lejuez said. “They’re just not as good as what we previously expected.”
Warby’s executives said that while customer demand remains below prepandemic levels, its stores are profitable and pay back opening costs within 20 months. The company carries very little debt and its expansion plans aren’t affected by rising interest rates.
Mr. Blumenthal said Warby Parker is well positioned to continue gaining market share as customer demand continues to recover.
“Irrespective of pandemics or commuting patterns or macroeconomic conditions,” he said, “people need glasses.”
Warby Parker uses data from online orders to choose locations for new stores.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Laura Hazard Owen / Nieman Lab:
Google Search changes could significantly decrease publishers’ traffic and affiliate revenue, but the Perspectives section may highlight individual journalists
Google is changing up search. What does that mean for news publishers?
https://www.niemanlab.org/2023/05/google-is-changing-up-search-what-does-that-mean-for-news-publishers/
A shift to AI-generated search results will decrease the traffic that Google sends to publishers’ sites, as more people get what they need straight from the Google search page instead.
At its annual I/O conference on Wednesday, Google announced a slew of “experiments” and changes that are coming to search.
It’s early days. But if these changes are rolled out widely, they’ll be the most significant overhaul of some of the important space on the internet in quite awhile. The shift could significantly decrease the traffic that Google sends to publishers’ sites, as more people get what they need right from the Google search page instead. They could also do some damage to the affiliate revenue that publishers derive from product recommendations.
On the bright side, a new search filter aimed at highlighting humans could help highlight individual journalists, columnists, and newsletters — maybe.
“Search Generative Experience”
Google will place AI-generated answers right at the top of some search pages.
You see the top three sources by default, but can toggle for more.
AI-generated content will also be incorporated heavily into shopping results. Search something like “bluetooth speaker for a pool party under $100,” or “good bike for a 5 mile commute with hills,” and up pops an AI-powered list of recommended products to buy. I haven’t tested this feature, but in addition to keeping users off publishers’ pages altogether, it also seems as though it’s not great news for any publishers that make money from affiliate links.
Google cautions that SGE is still an experiment, and it’s not widely available yet.
“Hidden gems”
Google is also expanding the use of a search filter called “Perspectives” that brings user-created content — think Reddit posts, YouTube videos, and blog posts — into search results. This change is coming at a time when Americans are increasingly seeking out news and information from individuals, not institutions — and TikTok and Instagram are eating into Google’s share of the search market. Here’s Google:
“In the coming weeks, when you search for something that might benefit from the experiences of others, you may see a Perspectives filter appear at the top of search results. Tap the filter, and you’ll exclusively see long- and short-form videos, images and written posts that people have shared on discussion boards, Q&A sites and social media platforms. We’ll also show more details about the creators of this content, such as their name, profile photo or information about the popularity of their content.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Help! My Political Beliefs Were Altered by a Chatbot!
AI assistants may be able to change our views without our realizing it. Says one expert: ‘What’s interesting here is the subtlety.’
https://www.wsj.com/articles/chatgpt-bard-bing-ai-political-beliefs-151a0fe4?mod=djemalertNEWS
When we ask ChatGPT or another bot to draft a memo, email, or presentation, we think these artificial-intelligence assistants are doing our bidding. A growing body of research shows that they also can change our thinking—without our knowing.
One of the latest studies in this vein, from researchers spread across the globe, found that when subjects were asked to use an AI to help them write an essay, that AI could nudge them to write an essay either for or against a particular view, depending on the bias of the algorithm. Performing this exercise also measurably influenced the subjects’ opinions on the topic, after the exercise.
“You may not even know that you are being influenced,” says Mor Naaman, a professor in the information science department at Cornell University, and the senior author of the paper. He calls this phenomenon “latent persuasion.”
These studies raise an alarming prospect: As AI makes us more productive, it may also alter our opinions in subtle and unanticipated ways. This influence may be more akin to the way humans sway one another through collaboration and social norms, than to the kind of mass-media and social media influence we’re familiar with.
Tomi Engdahl says:
I’ve mixed feelings about this. Vice I’m not fussed about, but Motherboard have done some interesting stuff over the years
Vice and Motherboard owner files for bankruptcy
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-65462957
The company behind the websites Vice and Motherboard has filed for bankruptcy in the US and is set to be sold to a group of its lenders.
Vice Media Group – which was valued at $5.7bn (£4.5bn) in 2017 – could be taken over for $225m.
The youth-focused digital publisher said it will continue to operate during the bankruptcy process.
It added that it “expects to emerge as a financially healthy and stronger company in two to three months”.
Launched in 1994 as a fringe magazine called Voice of Montreal by Shane Smith, Gavin McInnes and Suroosh Alvi, Vice currently operates in more than 30 countries.
It was once heralded as part of vanguard of companies set to disrupt the traditional media landscape with edgy, youth-focused content spanning print, events, music, online, TV and feature films.
Tomi Engdahl says:
I Testified Before the SENATE On BLOCKERS | Here’s What Happened
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhxLuFx-Sbc
In today’s Iivestream I discuss my recent testimony before the senate on blockers and fair use.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Privacy Sandbox Initiative: Google to Phase Out Third-Party Cookies Starting 2024 https://thehackernews.com/2023/05/privacy-sandbox-initiative-google-to.html
Google has announced plans to officially flip the switch on its twice-delayed Privacy Sandbox initiatives as it slowly works its way to deprecate support for third-party cookies in Chrome browser. To that end, the search and advertising giant said it intends to phase out third-party cookies for 1% of Chrome users globally in the first quarter of 2024
Tomi Engdahl says:
Neeva, the would-be Google competitor, is shutting down its search engine https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/20/23731397/neeva-search-engine-google-shutdown
Neeva, which for a while looked like one of the startups with a real chance to challenge the supremacy of Google Search, announced on Saturday that it is shutting down its search engine. The company says its pivoting to AI and may be acquired by Snowflake, The Information reported but mostly seems to believe it failed
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jessica Maddox / Wired:
A look at the issues fomented by a decentralized web, including a rise in conspiratorial thinking due to more siloed online spaces and increasing app fatigue
The Hidden Dangers of the Decentralized Web
https://www.wired.com/story/the-hidden-dangers-of-the-decentralized-web/
From social networks to crypto, independently run servers are being touted as a solution to the internet’s problems. But they’re far from a magic bullet.
Isabella says:
Thank you for sharing this insightful article on web development trends in 2020. It’s fascinating to see how rapidly the industry evolves each year. I found your points on the importance of responsive design and mobile optimization particularly relevant, as mobile usage continues to dominate. Another trend that caught my attention is the rise of Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) and their ability to provide a seamless user experience across different devices. It’s great to see how technologies like JavaScript frameworks and APIs are enabling developers to create more interactive and dynamic web applications. I look forward to staying updated on the latest advancements in the industry. Thank you again for sharing this informative piece!
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft launches an AI tool to take the pain out of building websites
https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/23/microsoft-launches-an-ai-tool-to-take-the-pain-out-of-building-websites/
Microsoft wants to take the pain out of designing web pages. AI is its solution.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Meta has no choice but to sell Giphy at $262M loss to Shutterstock
With UK forcing a sale and GIFs losing popularity, Meta was bound to take a hit.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/05/fire-sale-shutterstock-to-buy-giphy-for-262-million-less-than-meta-paid/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Suomen Digimarkkinointi Oy
MARKKINOINTI
Vastuullinen markkinointi: Mitä se on? Ajankohtaiset case-esimerkit, jotka huomioida digimarkkinoinnissa
https://www.digimarkkinointi.fi/blogi/vastuullinen-markkinointi
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://urlclean.com/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Matthew Gault / VICE:
A look at hCaptcha, a reCAPTCHA alternative used by Discord and others that is using AI-generated images to train ML systems and generative adversarial networks
Captcha Is Asking Users to Identify Objects That Don’t Exist
https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgwy5n/captcha-is-asking-users-to-identify-objects-that-dont-exist
Discord’s captcha asked users to identify a ‘Yoko,’ a snail-like object that does not exist and was created by AI.
People trying to use Discord are being asked to identify an object that does not exist. The object in question is a “Yoko,” which appears to be a kind of mix between a snail and a yoyo. Multiple people have reported seeing a prompt to identify a Yoko when asked to solve a simple captcha prompt while trying to use Discord.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.admanager.fi/blogit/semia-vai-displayta-vinkit-oikean-mainonnan-kanavan-valitsemiseen?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=b2b_vk_admanager&utm_content=sem_vai_display_blogi&fbclid=IwAR2Ci_hok7eg2DocMRbK0buA-FHKWQNfbXBTPk0wdNTdYTzd1LBAt6p06SQ_aem_th_AbGpXwZFd6pZsKSu6Xcpb-AiDYEJNnFqEj2ZRED3bEbLKpmwIZVkPy3DpaAnJFIQayLs74ndjnEf_YsBD9ElpxhQ
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://info.knowit.fi/sustainable-web-webinar
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.karhuhelsinki.fi/blogi/taas-uusi-tietosuojahuomautus-googlen-palvelut-myrskyssa/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.karhuhelsinki.fi/blogi/headless-wordpress-hypetysta-kauhutarina-vai-askel-kohti-parempaa-maailmaa/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.kolster.fi/blog/domain-on-arvokasta-omaisuutta
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hakukoneoptimoinnin aloitusopas, osa 5: Tärkeimmät keinot kuvien optimointiin
https://idafram.fi/ajankohtaista/kuvien-optimointi/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Näin teet hyvän display-mainoksen
https://www.admanager.fi/blogit/nain-teet-hyvan-display-mainoksen?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=b2b_vk_admanager&utm_content=nainteetdisplay_blogi&fbclid=IwAR1X-BhYzv7So-CVwqRU1cY9UJ-R3alelchy4yyQF0BFoFxb8-3zhcvOBZ0_aem_Aenvht3ADVSoL1ia3Y1fN8MFrLHtb5lE4Gr7ap3lMKGOR4Awi4cmgeD9jMLz3VWcAncc0dco0txmDl8l0p4dNzTX1R9WY19DHt7LIaNcXWAimg
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/21/watch-a-web-page-fetch-itself-over-tls-complete-with-commentary/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Statcounter: Microsoft Edge is no longer world’s second desktop browser
https://www.neowin.net/news/statcounter-microsoft-edge-is-no-longer-worlds-second-desktop-browser/
Google Chrome – 66.13% (+0.36 points)
Apple Safari – 11.87% (+0.95 points)
Microsoft Edge – 11% (-0.15 points)
Firefox – 5.65% (-0.82 points)
Opera – 3.09% (-0.08 points)