Category: Media & Social

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The fediverse could be awesome

Key take-home from Cindy Cohn and Rory Mir’s EFF article “The Fediverse Could Be Awesome”.

“If a federated social media is better than the centralized incumbents, it will be because people made a conscious choice to make it better – not because of any technological determinism.”

I think if Twitter continues along its current trajectory, Mastodon and the wider fediverse will grow. Twitter was flawed from the outset. The wider your circle grew the more antagonistic it became. The harder you fought to hold your ground.

The federated landscape fractures that monopoly, both physically and psychologically.

Electronic Frontier Foundation
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Homophily

While in the car today I caught a few minutes of Naturebang on BBC Radio4. This episode explored the link between Starlings and Social Networks.

I learned that starling murmurations, or the swirling patters they make when flying in synchrony, were modelled they discovered that groups of seven birds control all of the crowds movements. One bird moves, taking with it the six birds close by, and they take the six around them, until all of the birds move together.

It’s all beautifully and elegant when seen in birds. Not so when translated into humans and our social networks.

In humans this “tendency for people to seek out or be attracted to those who are similar to themselves” is called homophily. It’s also what causes the echo chamber myopia you get on social media.

We all follow people we agree with, repost things that reflect our opinions. I’m going to say it’s one part of the many things that’s contributed to political tribalism. Those with similar ideologies only interacting with others of a similar ideology.

It’s probably why polling doesn’t work anymore.

I’m sure the causes of the current political malaise are more complicated, and it’s a mistake to reduce things in this way, but as someone from Oakham once said, “the simplest solution is most likely the right one”.

Beware, the way birds move together, might mirror how we coagulate on social media.

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Nigerian teenagers are making slick Sci-fi films with their smartphones

This from Ayun Halliday in Open Culture is both interesting, and a little worrying.

Open Culture

It’s great for these filmmakers, they’re making films, exhibiting their talents, and learning their craft, and getting them noticed. How long before someone comes along, and gives them a budget, lets them make something bigger?

My worry is, this kind of filmmaking doesn’t automatically translate. How many times has a great passion project been the last we ever see of a filmmaker? I can think of a few more talents, who’s work seemed to suffer when they were given a budget, they just don’t know what to do with the money. It’s as if the energy needed to make the passion project gets lost.

The pressures of making a no-budget film are not the same as making something where you’re responsible to others. These young men need professional mentoring if they’re going to progress, but with the right care and guidance, they could be the next Spielberg. Remember he started out making war movies on 8mm film when he was a kid.

A secondary worry is the pressure this kind of filmmaking puts on those trying to be an industry professional. How can anyone make a living from projects like this? It’s not a sustainable model. It’s great that people can make a film with only their enthusiasm. It doesn’t bode well for those who need to make a living from the industry. This model is being repeated around the world. Enthusiastic individuals enticing (and or exploiting) other enthusiastic individuals to work for nothing.

I’ve worked on the wrong side of that equation once too often. It hurts, and can be hard to recover from.

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Netflix battles the fetish of theatrical release

I don’t want to debate the possible destruction of the independent film industry in this country. I agree the lack of many things will force creators to follow the money, and head to the States. I agree the destruction of the independent film sector would deprive audiences of original films.

I disagree that Netflix will make it harder for independent producers to make their movies.

The Guardian

Yes Netflix are bypassing the theatrical release of films. For some theatrical release is the last way to define a film as a film. It’s an obsession I think we need to get past. I fear if we’re not careful, we’re in danger of fetishising theatrical release, to the detriment of the bigger picture, telling stories and making movies.

These days the majority of films aren’t actually films, in the traditional sense of the word. Only a handful of titles are actually shot on celluloid, most are shot digitally, and when they do get a theatrical release, they’re delivered to theatres on hard drives and projected digitally. All of the analogue processes that went into the making a film are gone, replaced by their digital equivalent.

The only part left of films analogue past is a release into theatres.

Steven Spielberg was recently at the forefront of a campaign to have The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences change their rules. The campaign wanted movies made for streaming services excluded from the Oscars. He argued they should be considered television movies and submitted to the Emmy Awards. The US Department of Justice warned The Academy, they could be breaking antitrust laws, if they exclude Netflix movies. I’m afraid Mr Spielberg is clinging to an anachronism. We have to accept that theatrical release does not a film make.

The Netflix model is not perfect, but it filled a gap created by the studios. Hollywood abandoned independent films, and went all-in on bigger budget, franchise and superhero extravaganzas. Netflix simply filled that hole in the market.

Later this year Disney will launch its own streaming service. It will not only offer Disney’s entire back catalogue, but also the catalogues of Marvel, Star Wars, Fox, and National Geographic. That’s a huge premium catalogue to compete against. Disney will also, at some point, pull all of their content from Netflix. Netflix have responded by increasing production, and sourcing original content from around the world. That has to be good for independent producers. Our stories will get told, our films made, but only if we stop obsessing over theatrical release, and embrace streaming.

Side note: Flicking though the UK catalogue of Netflix reveals a diversity of movies and television shows from around the world. That has to be good for independent producers?

For me the antagonism towards Netflix asks a bigger question. What defines a movie? It’s the same question books faced more than a decade ago. Does a book stop being a novel if it’s read on a Kindle? I would say no. How you read the novel is irrelevant. Hard copy or not, that’s just the delivery format. Some people have chosen to fetishise the novel in its analogue form, as if a book suddenly stops being a novel, when it’s read on something other than ink on paper. Films are being crammed into the same headspace. A movie doesn’t suddenly stop being a film because it’s streamed to a home theatre system.

Our idea of film is like the rest of our language, always evolving. These days I’d define a movie as a self-contained story, a plot with a beginning, a middle, and an end. How I watch it is less important. I’m not trying to deny the theatrical experience. There is something magical about sitting in a theatre, but it’s not the only way to watch a movie.

In the end it really is about telling a story. If it engages you, who cares how you watch it.

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Facebook is a data collection machine

A response prompted by a Kari Paul article in The Guardian.

The Guardian

The Sturdy app shows anyone who wants to see that Facebook is not a social network, it’s a data collection machine.

A new Facebook app will allow users to sell the company data on how they use competitors’ apps.

How does Facebook use the data it collects? I think it’s using our data against us. When I first wrote that sentence it came out as, “using it against its users”. I quickly realised, even if you don’t use Facebook, you come into contact with someone who does, Facebook knows something about you through them. When it says it’s connecting people, it really is, it’s mapping the many ways we brush against each other.

Imagine you’re walking along Piccadilly at 3.30 in the afternoon. Someone takes a picture, and posts it at 3.31. Facebook knows something about the person who posted the picture, and the location of everyone captured in the photo. What if Mark Zuckerberg was walking along Piccadilly, and at 3.32 someone spat in his face. The picture taken at 3.30 might show the assailant. It makes everyone in the picture a suspect.

Facebook gets to work cross-referencing various accounts, pulling up the latest facial recognition software. Suddenly the police are at your door, making you account for your actions between 3.15 and 3.45. You were minding your own business, but now you have to prove it, you have to prove somehow you didn’t spit in Mark Zuckerberg’s face. They’re not trying to prove you did it, you’re trying to prove you didn’t.

At this point I can hear a certain section of the population repeating a mantra, throwing it in my direction like some spunk sodden flannel, “nothing to hide nothing to fear”. That’s not an argument, it’s an accusation. You assume I have something I hide because I don’t want to account for my whereabouts.

Now imagine the world taking a sudden turn towards the authoritarian? What if people below a certain income level aren’t allowed to walk along Piccadilly? The police are at your door, questioning you about the assault on Mark Zuckerberg, but arresting you for being too poor to be on Piccadilly.

Who knows how this technology is being used, or will be used in the future? Facebook aren’t mining data because it’s fun, they’re doing it because it’s worth something. The information they collect can be used for what? Changing your purchasing habits? Telling you what you know about the world? Influencing elections?

Facebook is not a benign force, it’s a privately owned data collection machine.

Now ask yourself how’s it being used?

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Teenage girl in Malaysia kills herself ‘after Instagram poll’

Jamie Fullerton in The Guardian describes the sinister face of social media.

The Guardian

There is a cold inevitability to this headline, a sadness going way beyond the mountain of sadness connected to this girl’s death.

Makes me wonder, what kind of people is social media engineering?

We really are all fucked if we’ve become a world where voting on someone’s death, or life, is given so little thought. My guess is every one of the 69 per cent who voted “death” didn’t think she was serious. Their response to “Really Important, Help Me Choose D/L” was as random as flipping a coin. They didn’t think about the question, or the outcome, they just flipped a tail instead of a head at the toss.

The even more worrying implication is the lack of of critical thinking in her followers, in those who voted. Would this girl still be alive if she had put an “L” before the “D”? I’m going to make a dangerous assumption and say she put the “D” first because she had suicide in mind. Her metric was already headed in that direction, the answer just confirmed her choice. The 69 per cent chose randomly, and followed blindly.

That has ramifications reaching way beyond this girls suicide, taking us somewhere over the horizon, and dropping us in a well so deep we may never get out.

In a complicated world social media makes everything binary, simplifies a mater of life and death into a choice between, “D” or “L”. Ironically they understood the difference between the abstract “D” for “death” and “L” for “life” but not the nuance of putting “D” before “L”.

There are no binary choices. I fear we are forgetting that fact, forgetting how to navigate complexity.

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The Independent vs. Double Down News

Two stories about the rise in knife crime. The first from Lizzie Dearden in The Independent, the other from Temi Mwale for DoubleDown News. One is direct and to the point, the other is not.

The Independant
Double Down News
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Slow cinema

I’m not sure I agree with Andrew Russell’s thesis in The Conversation that “people are searching for ways to escape the fast pace of the modern world” and choosing slow cinema as a way to achieve this.

The Conversation

Slow cinema is all about tension and release. The filmmaker builds tension by making the audience wait. I suspect its popularity for a slower paced film may have more to do with peoples habit of bingeing through ten hours of serialised drama. Audiences have more tolerance than ever before for stories building over time.

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Facebook ‘unintentionally uploaded’ 1.5 million people’s email addresses

Another insight into the watchers in the tower from Rob Price of Business Insider. Facebook “unintentionally” harvested millions of peoples contact emails.

Business Insider

Price’s report exposes a contradiction from Facebook. They “disclosed to Business Insider that 1.5 million people’s contacts were collected”. This was apparently unintentional, a hangover from another protocol, that automatically uploaded new users email contacts.

These contacts were “fed into Facebook’s systems, where they were used to improve Facebook’s ad targeting, build Facebook’s web of social connections, and recommend friends to add”.

If that’s true, what’s the point of Facebook assurances that “these contacts were not shared with anyone and we’re deleting them”. The contacts have already been fed into Facebook’s system. Deleting them makes no difference, the damage is done, the ad targeting has begun.

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Facebook’s role in Brexit – and the threat to democracy

Possibly the most explosive TED talk I’ve seen, ever. Carole Cadwalladr breaks down “Facebook’s role in Brexit – and the threat to democracy”.

TED

Carole Cadwalladr’s investigations may be the most important of a generation. Her work has exposed the workings of the tower at the centre of the panopticon, the machine that manipulates democracy.

For those unfamiliar, the panopticon is an idea, a circular prison with cells that have glass walls. Watched from a central tower, compliance is teased from its tenants because we never know when we’re being watched.

Michel Foucault used it as a metaphor highlighting the way power, since the destruction of absolute monarchies, has sought to hide itself from view. If there is no focus for our anger, it’s impossible to remove the cause of our pain.

If we are tenants of the panopticon, Facebook has made themselves the warders, and they’re stressing us into compliance. What I’d like to know is who pays them? Because whomever pays the warder calls the shots.

The biggest obstacle to finding that, is what we see when we look out of our cells. It’s not the looming black tower at the centre, but our own reflections in the glass.

We need to find ways to get a light into that tower.

Cadwalladr has gone some way to doing that. With the help of whistleblower Christopher Wylie, she was able to expose a small part of the tower’s mechanism, how the various platforms, stairs, landings, and corridors, link.

There are still questions to be answered. Where do the corridors lead, who is behind the various doors of the labyrinthine maze? I have theories, I’m sure Cadwalladr does too.

I just hope she keeps looking, because we all need her answers.

Once she does have more answers, we have to decide what we do with her revelations, because they will be revelations. Keep in mind that the structure we’re all part of is designed to have us stare like Narcissus at our own reflection. Do we have the will to see past our own image, to the structure of the tower, and what’s hidden within?

This will take great effort and the will to see it all? I think we must.