My weekly reading list
AIAI is tech and marketing speak for a range of technology that imitates human intellect. Learn more → has reinvigorated a data and privacy debate that’s at least 60 years old. Also there was lots about social media this week.
Read
What I’ve been reading this week:
X will let people you’ve blocked see your posts
Musk says it is “high time” that blocked users can see but not interact with public posts.
Elon Musk has used a reply on X to announce that blocked users will be able to view – but not interact with – the public posts of those users that have blocked them on the platform. There’s not a lot of detail on what else that will mean or when the change will happen, but it is no secret Musk doesn’t like the block button. Whatever else, it certainly makes X an even more hostile place for some users and take the platform even further down the free speech absolutism path Musk has it on.
Emma Roth and Kylie Robison – Tuesday 24 September 2024
The Verge
WordPress co-founder goes to town on ‘cancer’ WP Engine.
Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress, has published a no holds barred tear down of WP Engine, a for profit hosting provider offering a managed WordPress product. WP Engine is not affiliated with Automatic, the organisation behind the official open-source WordPress project, but builds on top of WordPress. Mullenweg calls them a “cancer to WordPress” adding that ”it’s important to remember that unchecked, cancer will spread.” WP Engine has fired back with a cease-and-desist and it looks like things are going to get ugly. I think I will write something more substantial on what’s going on here, as it emblematic of larger trends facing the open movement.
Matt Mullenweg – Saturday 21 September 2024
WordPress.org News
Queensland has its first night-life tsar. Has he been set up to sink or swim?
Queensland has a new Night-Life Economy Commissioner.
There is no question that the night-time economy around Australia and the world has been hit hard in recent years with the slow post-COVID-19 recovery coupled with changes in consumer behaviour and the dual cost of living and housing affordability crises. Queensland has joined other states and international cities by appointing a Night-Life Economy Commissioner. Our first ‘night-life tsar’ is John “JC” Collins. As the former Powderfinger bassist and co-owner and venue director of Fortitude Music Hall and the Triffid, Collins has the right kind of credentials. The Queensland Government’s $1.6 million cash splash on venues will help, but it’s a big job. Collins is tasked with working with live music venues, nightclubs, festival organisers, bars and restaurants, entertainment precincts, arts venues, and local pubs across the state to boost the night economy.
Courtney Kruk – Wednesday 25 September 2024
Brisbane Times
Mark Zuckerberg says there’s ‘no causal connection’ between social media and teen mental health
Zuckerberg is adamant there is no connection between social media use and teen mental health.
Despite announcing Instagram teen accounts just last week, Zuckerberg continues to claim there’s no link between social media and teen mental health. Even so, Zuckerberg sees platforms having a role, but prefers an approach where platforms create parental management tools so parents can decide themselves when to limit their child’s social media usage. Zuckerberg also thinks individual platforms should not be responsible for age verification, suggesting app stores should be responsible for that. ⟨ What a ridiculous notion though, since users can sign up and use lots of social media platforms on a computer. ⟩
Emma Roth – Thursday 26 September 2024
The Verge
60 Years Ago, Congress Warned Us About the Surveillance State. What Happened?
60 years ago Congress was concerned about data and privacy, but they unintentionally created the environment for surveillance capitalism to thrive.
It is a long read, but the excerpt from Jennifer Holt’s book Cloud Policy: A History of Regulating Pipelines, Platforms, and Data (2024) up on The MIT Press Reader is worth the read. There’s a lot in it, but the big takeaway for me is
Holt examines how the US Congress rallied against government surveillance and how computerised data collection could impact citizen’s privacy in response to President Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1965 proposal to create a federal data center to house consolidated federal databases called the National Data Bank. Ultimately the proposal was scrapped.
Interestingly, as Holt notes, the numerous government hearings on the proposal looked only at government control of data and the need to protect the public from it “without sufficient attention to the dangers lurking elsewhere.” Holt goes on to say:
“The focus on protecting public data from the perceived dangers of centralized state collection and storage blinded legislators to the problems created by the solution: putting data in the hands of private companies. Corporations ultimately filled the vacuum created by the National Data Bank’s failure, and became the chief custodians of U.S. citizens’ private data.”
All in all, Holt argues that “the same legal and cultural struggles will await the next critical infrastructural technology and the one after that …” Regulation of AIAI is tech and marketing speak for a range of technology that imitates human intellect. Learn more → has definitely pushed these kinds of concerns back into public discourse, but it remains to be seen if this will go far enough to save us from our surveillance capitalist reality.
Jennifer Holt – Friday 27 September 2024
The MIT Press Reader, MIT Press
Services Australia has been hammered with social engineering scams FOI data reveals.
Services Australia – the agency managing Centrelink, child support, Medicare and other government payments and services – has seen a 440% increase in data breaches by scammers this year (so far) engaging in social engineering. If you aren’t sure what that is, it is where people call an agency pretending to be someone else using information harvested from previous breaches and using it to access customer accounts. For context, nine social engineering-related incidents were reported in 2023 and just a single report was made in the previous three years.
Josh Taylor – Sunday 29 September 2024
The Guardian
More to read
Of course, there’s lots of other stuff I have been reading that doesn’t make it into the weekly round up. If the long list is too much, I also group links into collections:
If you have a Google Account you can even share links with me.
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Disclosure
AI use
This blog post was drafted using Google Docs. No part of the text of this blog post was generated using AIAI is tech and marketing speak for a range of technology that imitates human intellect. Learn more →. The original text was not modified or improved using AIAI is tech and marketing speak for a range of technology that imitates human intellect. Learn more →. No text suggested by AIAI is tech and marketing speak for a range of technology that imitates human intellect. Learn more → was incorporated. If spelling or grammar corrections were suggested by AIAI is tech and marketing speak for a range of technology that imitates human intellect. Learn more → they were accepted or rejected based on my discretion (however, sometimes spelling, grammar and corrections of typos may have occurred automatically in Google Docs).
The banner image (i.e. the first image at the top of the blog post) was generated by AIAI is tech and marketing speak for a range of technology that imitates human intellect. Learn more → using Text to Vector Graphic (BetaBeta is an early release of software or some other product or service to see how users use it to inform further development of it…. Learn more →) in Adobe Illustrator.
Credits
Image: A pattern made up of an icon of two books on top of each other. The top book has an orange cover and the bottom book has a purple cover. The piles of books are on a green colour background. An adaptation of an image generated by Elliott Bledsoe using Text to Vector Graphic (BetaBeta is an early release of software or some other product or service to see how users use it to inform further development of it…. Learn more →) in Adobe Illustrator. Prompt: ‘A simple hand drawn pile of books’.
Provenance
This blog post was produced by Elliott Bledsoe from Agentry, an arts marketing micro-consultancy. It was first published on 29 Sep 2024. It has not been updated. This is version 1.0. Questions, comments and corrections are welcome – get in touch any time.
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Unless otherwise stated or indicated, this blog post – (Un)read in the ledger: Monday 23–Sunday 29 September 2024 – is licensed under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0). Please attribute Elliott Bledsoe as the original creator. View the full copyright licensing information for clarification.
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