"/>Memorable recommendation in Vox article
This article from Vox is fairly balanced in its assessment of the Facebook/Australia kerfuffle. There are pros and cons to the way Facebook approached this. Some of the media coverage made it sound like Facebook blocked the internet, and were standing between the raw news sources, and their users.
All material was still available from their raw sources, and as one person in the article mentions:
"I would be much more comfortable if all Aussies got their news direct from the source,ā he said. āI think this would be best for quality journalism and the strength of our democracy."
The fine gentleman definitely has a point. Too bad that doesn't seem to be the main message carried in most news outlets.
If anything, I think this issue might have helped illustrate the problem that arises when you treat a privately run company as a public utility, and then getting miffed when they begin to make decisions based on profit. What were people expecting would happen?
Fast ads matter
My colleague Gustav co-authored this very nice article on why faster ads on the internet matters, whether you are an advertiser, publisher, or consumer. It outlines a simple yet powerful framework of how to think about, test, and implement faster ads from a publisher perspective.
How decentralisation shapes the Internet
Konstantinos KomaitisĀ speaks at TEDxThessalonikiĀ
Via Neil
This is Cuba's Netflix, Hulu, and Spotify – all without the internet - YouTube
The Cuban internet, El Paqueta, a package of content circulated weekly, is supremely interesting because it shows a curated infrastructure-less internet
Profile engine
The Profile Engine has now been donated to the Internet Archive (31st March 2018)
Knowledge is power and all the power is concentrated in the hands of a malevolent force - corporate Facebook.Ā
We sued Facebook, fought hard in a David and Goliath battle and won a good settlement. One day, maybe we'll have time to tell the whole story - you'd be utterly shocked what goes on inside Facebook - what you've already heard is just the tip of the iceberg. If you have a Facebook account, we strongly recommend that you delete it completely, without delay. Learn more about FacebookĀ
We are freely and lawfully transferring this database to the Internet Archive (archive.org) as they have a long track record as a suitable, responsible long term custodian and we have the legal right to do so.Ā
Making this data freely available and preserving it serves many purposes. Here are a few:Ā
* Helping to reunite old friends with powerful search tools (Facebook don't provide powerful search tools because if you have to search through hundreds of pages of profiles then you view more ads than if the tools take you straight to who you want).
* Helping you to find and meet new people with common interests
* Exposing the interests and group memberships of politicians and public figures (What did they really like ten years ago before they were famous?)
* This snapshot of the early days of social networking will be invaluable to Genealogists, Social Historians and perhaps even Archaeologists in ten, fifty or even 1000 years time.
* Most importantly, this will break Facebook's monopoly over social data. People chose to make this data free and public, yet Facebook still charge for it. Not any more!
I'm not sure what to make of this. Terrible move or great move, and for who? Are these really the reasons they donated the content to archive.org?