The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Want to Heal the Internet? Ban All Collection of User Data
The social media/search giants have mastered the dark arts of obfuscating how they're reaping billions of dollars in profits from monetizing user data, and lobbying technologically naive politicos to leave their vast skimming operations untouched.
I've been commenting on the cancerous disease that's taken control of the Internet– what Shoshana Zuboff calls Surveillance Capitalism–for many years.
Here is a selection of my commentaries:
Facebook Slides After Report Claims 50% Of Its Users Are Fake
Facebook Ripped Off Game-Playing Kids And Their Parents In Multi-Year “Friendly Fraud” Scheme
Internal Facebook Memo Reveals The Company Encouraged ‘Friendly Fraud’
When parents found out how much their children had spent – one 15-year-old racked up $6,500 in charges in about two weeks playing games on Facebook – the company denied requests for refunds. Facebook employees referred to these children as “whales” – a term borrowed from the casino industry to describe profligate spenders. A child could spend hundreds of dollars a day on in-game features such as arming their character with a flaming sword or a new magic spell to defeat an enemy – even if they didn’t realize it until the credit card bill arrived. –Reveal News
Continue reading “Penguin: Facebook Fraud #GoogleGestapo Core Value”
‘The goal is to automate us': welcome to the age of surveillance capitalism
Shoshana Zuboff’s new book is a chilling exposé of the business model that underpins the digital world. Observer tech columnist John Naughton explains the importance of Zuboff’s work and asks the author 10 key questions
Read full interview. Book below the fold.
“Twister,” developed by Miguel Freitas, is a social network platform centered around micro-blogging, much like Twitter. However, rather than relying on centralized servers owned and maintained by a single firm, Twister users operate a blockchain combined with distributed hash table (DHT)–like and BitTorrent-like protocols to both make posts and send private messages, and also to receive entries from other users. Twister’s raison d’etre is that it offers a social networking platform that cannot be censored and cannot itself censor.
Ignoring Amazon: Risky, Short Sighted, Maybe Not an Informed Decision
I read “AWS, MongoDB, and the Economic Realities of Open Source.” The write up does a good job of explaining how convenience can generate cash for old line businesses.
There are several facets of Amazon’s system and method for competition which may be more important than the inclusion of open source software in its suite of “conveniences.”
Continue reading “Stephen E. Arnold: Ignoring Amazon — Bad Idea…”
