"Wikipedia is building its content on other people's first-gen research and investigative work. It publicly links to the source, but then back-door says to Google's search ranking system: 'Consider this source page to have no relevance or value'. It's been doing that for nearly a decade and a half."
Some dodgy-looking late 'eighties punk. Wouldn't be surprised if he ended up writing blogs with names like Popzazzle and Planet Botch. Nice semi-acoustic tho.
We're being digitally lobotomised. Force-fed. Used. The Internet has reached a truly sorry state, in which we're all told what to say, what to think, and what to like. We're imprisoned in an increasingly elitist system of content-delivery, which is calculatedly status-driven, and far more heavily based on real-life status than most of us realise. And outside of the fevered surveillance quest, online tech has innovated no genuinely new concepts since the 2000s. The Internet has become a stupefying Colossus of cultural stagnation.
Just over 45 years ago, the British music scene had fallen into a similar pit of mind-numbing misery. The music business thought its idle, elitist gravy train was safe. It was wrong.
The British punk movement of 1976 demolished the slobbish elitism of the mid 'seventies music scene, and turned a fat, platitudinous gravy train into a ground zero of fresh ideas and novelty, almost overnight. So is history about to repeat itself? Are we about to see the Internet's equivalent of punk sweep aside the repetitive boredom of Web 2.0, giving a voice to disenfranchised creative genius? And if so, how will it happen?
"But remember what the original Reddit team revealed back in 2005 about the purpose of downvotes, and remember that forcibly-displayed popularity totals are a form of branding. Like hot-ironed grades on the backs of livestock."
Their goal is to play us off against each other, for their ultimate benefit. The butter-wouldn't-melt authoritarians behind Web 2.0 strive to create in us a level of status-anxiety which will drive us to serve their needs.
They force us into a giant league table, in which we're constantly compared, and comparing ourselves, to others. We're devalued as people; reduced to scores. And the only way we can improve as “a score”, is to help Zuck, Dorsey, or any of the other tech moguls, increase their imcomprehensible wealth. The system was designed that way.
"But if it doesn't read like the contents of a call centre Team Leader's motivational speech, it's most unlikely to be widely visible. I mean, come on, that's not a blogging site."
A classic fixed-width design theme from WordPress.com, named 'Twenty Ten'. This was one of the most popular themes of all time, but is now 'retired' and unavailable to new WP.com users. You can now find a deep dig history of WordPress themes, appropriately enough, in The Deep-Dig History of WordPress Blog Themes.
Have you noticed? Blogging platforms died. Oh yes they did. No one wants to open them anymore, and the biggest, most successful blogging platform in the world surreptitiously reinvented itself as a website-builder. In an age where it's vastly easier to find an entertaining or incisive “blog post” on Twitter than it is on the one-time king of bloggery WordPress.com, surely it's time to ask: what happened? Who's to blame for our collective unfriending of the blogosphere?
"One of the unfortunate side effects in the rise of the personal brand, is that people have come to conflate criticism with bullying, stalking or defamation, and think they have a right to sweep away every comment they don't personally like."
“Do better”. It's simple advice, and it's guaranteed to improve the way the world sees you. Once upon a time, the accepted solution to criticism was to tackle the problem. But doing better is the last option some brands will consider in their quest to minimise bad publicity today. The logical ethos of “tackle the problem”, has, for some, steadily evolved into an ethos of “embrace the problem; tackle the messenger”. Does it work? Yes and no…
"Look at this!... That's over FOUR MILLION Google results for people on YouTube EXPLICITLY saying they're in breach of copyriđght, and yet, oh look, the videos are still up."
[UPDATE: July 2022] When I wrote this post, I was duped, as are so many people, into believing that the Electronic Frontier Foundation is a representative of the public interest.
After much investigation, it's become abundantly clear that the EFF is in truth a tech industry shill, lobbyist and litigation resource, built around an aggressive anti-copyright/anti-patent drive, which has been at the org's core for decades. The more you look at the EFF's litigation record, the more horrific the scale of its commitment to destroying intellectual property rights becomes.
The EFF is Silicon Valley's own weapon of war against any and all intellectual property rights that inconvenience elite cybertech's seize-all, gatekeep-all game of monopoly.
The EFF should not even be seen as a singular entity. It is part of an organised and deeply-affiliated cartel of elitist "champagne nonprofits" which collectively, manipulatively, advocates the brutal exploitation of artists and creators, and is driven from the back seat by Google. Other names in the cartel include Wikimedia, Internet Archive and Creative Commons.
But since the title of this post singularly references the EFF, let me give an example of an abuse that encapsulates the individual org's true regard for content creators...
In 2001, the Electronic Frontier Foundation set up a site called Chilling Effects, expressly to publicise and shame copyright holders who served Google with DMCA takedown notices. The cast-iron intention behind this thuggish move was to discourage creators from exercising their legal rights, by displaying their private actions to a baying mob of anti-copyright anarchists, whom the EFF knew would sometimes attack. That was the point of the site. To establish a punishment for victims of copyright infringment who sought rightful remedy. To create fear among victims of theft.
Whilst, if I were writing this post today, it would have a much more aggressive tone, and would assert that WE DEFINITELY DO NOT NEED THE EFF, I'll leave the document as a reminder of how easy it is to believe that even the most abusive actors have honourable intentions... [End of update]
It's inevitable. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act's “safe harbour” is always going to be championed by the tech oligarchs who exploit it to steal content by proxy. But bizarrely, it's also advocated by a lot of highly-respected people and organisations. One such example is the Electronic Frontier Foundation - more often cited by its abbreviation, the EFF.
As perceived by the public, the EFF is firmly against the abuses perpetrated by big tech. It's an organisation that small contributors to the Web desperately need. But it supports the DMCA safe harbour, and in so doing it awards licence to massive, multi-billionaire corporations to steal content by proxy. To exploit the small creatives who produce that content - many of whom have incredibly low incomes.
Big tech has not only knowingly exploited impoverished creatives to fuel and feed its multi-billion dollar advertising machine. It has also deliberately vilified copyright holders who have the nerve to insist that their creative work is not casually thrown around the Internet for other people's gain. How? By labelling their efforts to stop the grand banquet of content theft, as “censorship”.
"Mainstream social media needs to realise that the current deal, in which we exchange our entire personal dossier for an opportunity to be hidden out of sight whilst we're force-fed with editorially-sanctioned news, is wearing very, very thin."
I looked at his Twitter profile, and realised I couldn't actually see any of his content at all. I could see Promoted Tweets, a “Who To Follow” block, a “Topics to Follow” block, Retweets… If I'd scrolled down a little further I could probably, in fairness, have found a Tweet of his own. But the reality is that Twitter profile pages are now such a chaotic daub of digital migraine, that there's just too great a disincentive to bother.
Yes, what little chance the average person ever had of being visible in such an overcrowded environment, has steadily been eroded to a new, subterranean low. Eroded, in fact, to the point where even when we make a deliberate effort to notice them, ordinary people are swamped out of sight by what the platform wants us to look at instead.
Let's dispense with the illusion. Twitter is no longer a social network. It's slowly transformed into an editorially-curated news portal, increasingly dominated by large publishers rather than peer to peer chat. And the content management dynamics have evolved towards those of a news blog, where non-publishers are relegated to low-visibility “comment threads”, and do not define the topics. Indeed, even the commenting system is steadily being closed off, as Twitter opts both to hide Replies at whim, and give publishers a means to block Replies outright.
If you're handy with a keyboard and you've dipped more than a fingertip into the topsy-turvy world of freelance copywriting, I dare say you'll be familiar with the notion of the “free trial”. It might go by an alternative name, but it's the one where the hirer ever so politely explains that before you're given paid work, you either write at least one free article to “authenticate your ability”, or you take an extended hike.
The condition is rigid, and applies whether or not you already have a catalogue of content online. And the employment? There isn't any. You're “trialling” for the chance to be exactly what you already were. A self-employed freelancer who will still need to prove themselves over and over with each individual task. You're not being appointed - you're just registering. Under these circumstances, is it fair for the would-be hirer to demand a “free trial”?
