Don Thompson @guardeddon@qoto.org

📱 Facebook is 20. Author Jamie Bartlett investigates the new digital elite and the power of the vast platforms they control.

Gatekeepers, a new podcast on BBC Sounds https://bbc.in/4boLlHB

#Facebook #SocialMedia #PlatformEconomy #JamieBartlett #podcast #technology

The election year focus on 'deep fakes' is a distraction, conveniently ignoring the documented role of surveillance ads--or, the ability to target specific segments to shape opinion. This's a boon to Meta/Google, who've rolled back restrictions on political ads in recent years.

Put another way, a deep fake is neither here nor there unless you have a platform + tools to disseminate it strategically.

Bluesky opens to the public today and is taking a step toward federation. I talked with CEO Jay Graber about how it’s taking on the company that spawned it—and how its approach differs from Mastodon’s. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/02/06/bluesky-launch-public-jay-graber/

A powerful plea from the Young Peacemakers Assembly, a group of 14-18 year olds from diaspora & refugee backgrounds who are calling for an immediate, bilateral ceasefire in Gaza
11,500 children have been killed there. Pls sign and
Stand with Children (
http://savethechildren.org.uk
)

🐦🔗: https://nitter.cz/CarolineLucas/status/1754826641644146723#m

[2024-02-06 11:17 UTC]

Interesting announcement at #FOSDEM. The folks working on matrix (open source multiple messaging app) just announced that they’ve been working with WhatsApp to implement cross platform messaging.

This is because it’s mandated by the European Digital Markets Act.

Deadline for this to happen is March 7th (i think), when we see what is actually possible. Can a kind soul share a link to a helpful summary where I can learn more?

@bloor https://www.suncalc.org/ will give you the angles you need. Do you know the heights of the trees? (Or maybe you could fiddle with suncalc to work it out if you can get the date of the google imagery)

Manuscript for Monty Python's Spanish Inquisition sketch. In the British library.

I'd like to make contact with someone who knows about pedestrian navigation for the visually impaired. Can anyone intro me? If not pls boost to your networks

My real worry with Google's voyage into enshittification (thanks to Cory Doctorow @pluralistic the term) is YouTube.

Through YT, for the past 15 years, the world has basically entrusted Google to be the custodian of pretty much our global video archive.

There's countless hours of archived footage — news reports, political speeches, historical events, documentaries, indie films, academic lectures, conference presentations, rare recordings, concert footage, obscure music — where the best or only copy is now held by Google through YouTube.

What happens if that archival footage becomes unprofitable?

#tech #technology #Google #enshittification #youtube #video @technology #capitalism

Finding Geospatial Accounts on Mastodon

Besides following hashtags, such as #GISChat, #QGIS, #FOSS4G, #openstreetmap and #OSGeo, curating good lists is probably the best way to stay up to date with geospatial developments. To get you started (or to potentially enrich your existing lists), I thought I'd share my #Geospatial and #SpatialDataScience lists with you.

http://anitagraser.com/2024/02/03/finding-geospatial-accounts-on-mastodon/

Can’t wait!

I’ll be talking on the crypto wars, the surveillance biz model, & how in the late 90s we won strong encryption but lost privacy. What does this history tell us about defending core privacy infra like Signal from attack now? & how do we avoid the mistakes of the 90s?

https://www.ndss-symposium.org/ndss2024/keynote-meredith-whittaker/