When is the social web not the social web? When it is THE social web

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When is the social web not the social web? When it is THE social web

27 September 2024

A few days ago, a group called the Social Web Foundation was launched. A coming together of “leaders of the open social networking movement“, the foundation aims to make “connections between social platforms with the open standard protocol ActivityPub.” Rather than me reinventing the wheel, here’s the Wikipedia definition of ActivityPub:

ActivityPub is a protocol and open standard for decentralized social networking. It provides a client-to-server (shortened to C2S) API for creating and modifying content, as well as a federated server-to-server (S2S) protocol for delivering notifications and content to other servers. ActivityPub has become the main standard used in the fediverse, a popular network used for social networking that consists of software such as Mastodon, Pixelfed and PeerTube.

In short, ActivityPub allows individual, separate, decentralised social networking platforms, to “talk” to each other. Therefore someone on, say, Threads can (in theory) interact with another person on Mastodon. Threads and Mastodon are two different entities. The ActivityPub protocol means the Threads member does not need a Mastodon account, and vice versa. The Threads member will be able to interact with the Mastodon member, almost as if they were on the same platform.

Here’s the Social Web Foundation’s wording of what I just said:

The “social web”, also called the “Fediverse”, is a network of independent social platforms connected with the open standard protocol ActivityPub. Users on any platform can follow their friends, family, influencers, or brands on any other participating network.

The foundation, in the same sentence, is also proposing that the fediverse, the current conglomeration of independent social platforms, be referred to as the social web. Perhaps by now you’re saying to yourself: “remind me again; who are these Social Web Foundation people?”

You wouldn’t be the only one. When I first heard about the foundation, it reminded me of a group (I think) of people calling themselves fediverse.info. About a month ago, they proposed the use of a typographic symbol, an asterism, as a symbol of none other than the fediverse. I had no problems with the suggestion, but I wondered what sort of mandate they had to make such a proposal.

As I wrote then, there was very little information on the fediverse.info website as to who they were, and why they thought they were in a position to make the suggestion in the first place. The fediverse.info group may be made up of some of the most respected people in the fediverse, but you’d never know that from their webpage.

The foundation, on the other hand, is a little more transparent. At least in terms of membership. Their team page identifies Evan Prodromou, Mallory Knodel, and Tom Coates, as core members. What’s not so clear, is why they think they’re in a position to suggest the fediverse be renamed the social web. Unless you accept this rather dubious, and astonishing claim, about Prodromou:

Evan [Prodromou] made the first-ever post on the social web in May 2008.

Prodromou’s background is impressive. Not only did he co-write the ActivityPub protocol, he once worked for Microsoft, and in 2003 founded Wikitravel, a now defunct a web-based collaborative travel guide. He’s doubtless scored a few firsts during his career, but the first-ever social web post claim is problematic. Twitter, for instance, was founded two years earlier in 2006. If Twitter then is not a social web platform, what is?

Actually, there are a number of answers to that question, says fLaMEd, webmaster (a title often used in the nineties, by people who operated and published websites, in the absence of the yet to be devised term blogger) and writer, at fLaMEd fury:

Have you heard of blogs, guestbooks, forums, instant messaging, email?

Email has been around since the early 1970’s. Almost forty years before 2008. And if having a social exchange via email isn’t an instance of the social web, what is? Of course, email isn’t social in the same way that, say, a public, there for all to see, Twitter/X feed is.

Enter then some of the earliest websites, of which fLaMEd fury, online since 1996, is among. And this website, disassociated, online since 1997. I’ve written about my own experiences of this social web.

During the late 1990’s, I made the acquaintance of numerous webmasters, designers, and writers. Some were overseas, but many were in Australia. We communicated in a number of ways. Through the online journals of our personal websites, where we referenced each other, in true IndieWeb style. Or by writing in each other’s guestbooks.

Before long, about eight of us had established an email group, and in 1999, our “social web” interactions culminated in the establishment of the (now off-line) Australian Infront, a group of web creatives working to elevate the perception of Australian web design. Through the Infront’s discussion forums, and face-to-face social gatherings, we brought potentially thousands of local, and international, designers together. Try telling anyone involved that wasn’t social web, because something called ActivityPub didn’t then exist.

There’s nothing new about the social web, it’s been there almost as long as the internet has. But I suspect the Social Web Foundation is going to stay the course, and press ahead with its efforts to rename the fediverse the social web.

But Prodromou has one other claim to fame. In 2007, he founded a company called Control Yourself, which developed Identi.ca, a Twitter/X like microblogging platform. I was an Identi.ca member for a short time in 2008. Was Identi.ca, I wonder, the “social web” platform that Prodromou made this purported “first-ever” post from?

If so, then I think clarification is in order. Instead of saying “Evan made the first-ever post on the social web in May 2008”, perhaps it is more accurate to say he “made the first-ever post on the Identi.ca platform in 2008.”

AI is changing the way photos are classified, photos or memories

26 September 2024

The iPhone 16, Apple’s latest smartphone, has arrived on shop shelves. There are four versions of the device: 16, 16 Plus, 16 Pro, and 16 Pro Max. In time all will feature Apple Intelligence, Apple’s artificial intelligence (AI) offering, which will be “deeply integrated” into iOS18 and other Apple operating systems. From what I can gather, Apple Intelligence features will be rolled out over time, presumably by way of incremental updates to iOS18, and beyond.

One of the iPhone 16’s — specifically the Pro and Pro Max models — big talking points though, has been the inclusion of a physical shutter button (although Apple calls it “camera control”) for the camera. It means people will be able to tilt their phone into (what I’ll call) landscape mode, and have the device mimic cameras of old.

Of course, photos can still be taken in portrait orientation using the button. There are a number of other major new camera and photo settings, but Nilay Patel, editor-in-chief of The Verge, suggests the new camera/photo features alone may be reason enough to consider buying a 16.

There’s also speculation as to the difference Apple Intelligence will make to photos taken, going forward. A yet to arrive feature, called “Clean Up”, which like the “Magic Eraser” function on Google phones, will allow people to alter, with the aid of AI, their iPhone photos. They’ll be able to remove (and add) objects and people. It’s going to be a game-changer. So much so, that some smartphone images are being referred to as memories:

I asked Apple’s VP of camera software engineering Jon McCormack about Google’s view that the Pixel camera now captures “memories” instead of photos, and he told me that Apple has a strong point of view about what a photograph is — that it’s something that actually happened.

This distinction is significant. Old school images, raw and unedited, recording an instant in time, will continue to be referred to as photos. This will be a journalistic application. Images edited by way of AI, meanwhile, will become more appropriately considered memories.

Clean Up or Magic Eraser can be used to remove that inadvertently photo-bombing stranger who strays into the background of a family group shot, thus preserving the memory of the moment as those present would like to remember it.

Photos or memories. It seems all very inconsequential, a small step even — I’m merely scratching the surface here — but another of the many changes AI technologies are bringing our way.

Bringing everyone back to the workplace does little for company culture

25 September 2024

Amazon, the online retailer and tech company, has directed all employees to return to the office by early January 2025. Presently workers are required to be in the workplace at least three days a week. In a recent companywide announcement, CEO Andy Jassy says he wants to do away with the current hybrid working arrangement (being a few days at home, a few days onsite), in favour of having everyone back in the office.

Although Jassy outlined numerous reasons for the change in policy, he believes the move will strengthen the company’s culture. Company culture is a term that’s been bandied about — for what? — at least two decades now. It’s up there with other pitiful instances of corporate speak, including values migration and paradigm shift, but what does it even mean?

American writer and entrepreneur Laurie Ruettimann, probably summed it up best in November 2014, when she wrote:

I’ve been saying that your company doesn’t have a culture for years. You incorrectly apply the word “culture” to a group of people who behave a certain way because their lives are dominated by a few powerful figures in your office.

Isn’t it incredible, that ten years later, people still hold steadfast to the notion of company culture. The emperor’s new clothes, anyone? But a substantial body of research, conducted by PwC has concluded being present in the workplace does little for this so-called culture anyway:

The Big Four accounting firm conducted 13 months of research and surveyed over 20,000 business leaders, chief human resources officers and workers for its new Workforce Radar Report — and it found that hybrid workers feel more included and productive than those who sit at their company’s desk five days a week. “While many companies are pushing for return to office, it turns out that hybrid workers demonstrate the highest levels of satisfaction,” the report highlights.

It would be reasonable to think any findings made by an organisation such as PwC, particularly as a big four accounting entity, would be deemed noteworthy, but somehow I doubt that will be the case.

And for a definitely contrarian perspective on the subject of returning everyone to the workplace, read this Sentinel-Intelligence article.

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technology, trends

Another day, another problem with Voyager 1, solved

20 September 2024

Data the nearly fifty-year old deep space probe was returning to Earth earlier this year, was getting all scrambled up. But dutiful mission controllers sorted that out. This despite Voyager 1 being so far away that it’d take a day to reach, assuming we had a vessel that could travel at the speed of light.

More recently, Voyager 1 has been having have trouble using correcting thrusters that keep the probe’s antenna pointed at Earth. Fuel pipes to the aging thrusters have begun to clog up, rendering them inoperative. Mission controllers, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in California, however have been able to re-activate another set of thrusters — unused in decades — and effect a fix.

As a result of its exceptionally long-lived mission, Voyager 1 experiences issues as its parts age in the frigid outer reaches beyond our solar system. When an issue crops up, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, have to get creative while still being careful of how the spacecraft will react to any changes.

If you want a tricky problem solved, ask a mission controller from one of the automated space missions to help. And of course Apollo 13.

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astronomy, science, technology

LinkedIn is collecting user data for AI training

20 September 2024

Professional social network (assuming there’s such a thing) LinkedIn has started collecting user data to train its own AI bot.

No surprise there.

They’ve apparently auto opted all members in, whether they like it or not.

No surprise there.

Rachel Tobac, CEO of SocialProof Security, has posted instructions on how to opt-out, on X/Twitter.

I deactivated my LinkedIn account — after my then GP, of all people, invited me to join — well over ten years ago.

The disassociated podcast, web design in the wild west of 1997

20 September 2024

I’ve always thought setting up a podcast show would be fun. But, you know, I have no proper recording equipment, nor any idea what sort of subject matter such a “show” would feature. So the idea has sat dormant all these years.

But yesterday, I learned about NotebookLM, Google’s “personalized AI research assistant”, while reading a blog post by Robert Birming. Among NotebookLM’s features, is the ability to take some text, say a blog post, load said text into NotebookLM, and then apply the “Audio Overview” function.

Curious to try it, I took a post I wrote in 2022, about my early experiences of building websites, uploaded the text to NotebookLM, and waited for the result. This quite fun fireside chat, between the two “hosts”, a woman and a man, is what emerged:

The “hosts” confused me with the author of a book I referenced in my post, Jay Hoffmann, but, some people call me Jay, so not all is lost.

And that’s where web standards come in. Hoffman [er, Lampard] talks about using HTML 3.2. Early on he was a rebel, but a structured one.

Update: thanks to long-time disassociated reader, and one-time collaborator CoffeeGirl (AKA Stephanie), for this version of the podcast (dare I call it a remix?) based on my post about web design in 1997. This is a little more on point. #DeepDiveNinetiesWeb

This little snippet is fantastic:

Back then, choosing a domain name was a statement. You were declaring your independence from traditional media.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. For the record, I didn’t get the disassociated domain name until 1998, and when I did, it was disassociated.com.au. I tried to obtain the . com extension, but someone else had it. They contacted me, offering it for sale (at a premium), which I declined. Later, when the name became available in early 2003, I grabbed it.

Sweden wants to curb screen time for children under two

19 September 2024

Amelia Nierenberg, writing for The New York Times:

The intention of Sweden’s policy — and others like it — is to cut down on distractions, promote healthy development and help preserve the innocence of childhood. But some experts wonder if the guidance — however well-intentioned — may be too unrealistic and too judgmental to stick.

These are guidelines, not dictates, or bans, and Swedish health authorities are aiming for zero hours screen time for children under two years of age. I’m not sure what value, say, a one-year old child derives from any screen time at all, but the perspective of a parent of a child close to two years of age, may be different. Being able to temporarily distract a child with a game or cartoon show, may be a boon for any time-poor parent.

Google no longer archives cache versions of webpages

18 September 2024

Thomas Germain, writing for Gizmodo:

Nostalgia for a button that a lot of people probably haven’t heard of might seem absurd, but Google’s cache function was a foundational solution to one of the web’s earliest problems. As the web transformed into a more stable infrastructure, cache was mostly abandoned by regular consumers, but it was still a useful tool. SEO workers used it to watch changes made by competitors. Journalists and researchers checked caches to keep an eye on the historical record. Some savvy internet users knew cache was a way to get around paywalls, or as a poor man’s VPN to load websites that were blocked in particular regions.

I’ve not been able to access this feature for some time, which used to accompany search results, and was beginning to wonder what had happened. Google cache, as many referred to it, was also a good way to look at posts or articles that were intended to be online only for short periods of time.

Checking Google cache was always a quick and easy way to look at these sorts of documents after they had been deleted.

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history, technology, trends

Meta Teen Accounts limit Instagram use for teenagers under sixteen

18 September 2024

Instagram (IG) owner Meta is moving to make the social media platform safer for users under the age of sixteen, and introducing a host of new parental controls:

Today, we’re introducing Instagram Teen Accounts, a new experience for teens, guided by parents. Teen Accounts have built-in protections which limit who can contact them and the content they see, and also provide new ways for teens to explore their interests. We’ll automatically place teens into Teen Accounts, and teens under 16 will need a parent’s permission to change any of these settings to be less strict.

Among a raft of measures, teen accounts will be set to private by default (meaning only followers can view the account owner’s content), direct messages can only be sent by followers of a user, and content deemed sensitive will be blocked by default. Parents will have the facility to adjust numerous settings, and also place limits on how many hours a day their children can access IG. All teen accounts will be subject to a sleep-mode for eight hours overnight.

In addition, teen account holders will be required to verify their age. Meta says tools that can help identify incorrectly entered date of birth information will be rolled out in 2025. Where it is determined a user under the age of sixteen has supplied an “adult birthday”, their account will automatically be converted to a teen account.

Meta’s initiative is in response to growing concerns about the amount of time people under the age of sixteen are spending on social media, and the nature of their interactions and activities while using such platforms. Last week, the federal government announced it was considering banning social media access to Australians under the age of sixteen.

Should the Australian government ban social media access to young Australians?

16 September 2024

Last week the Australian federal government announced its intention to restrict access to social media platforms to younger Australians. For now details remain scant. The government is yet to specify an exact age at which young Australians would be able to begin using social media. The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, however has indicated somewhere between ages fourteen to sixteen was being considered.

Also unclear is how an age threshold would be enforced. Would this be the responsibility of a child’s parents or guardians? Would it be up to the social media companies? Would the so-called gatekeepers, companies including Apple and Google, who distribute social media apps through their app stores, also have a part to play? Should there even be any sort of ban in the first place?

This is a convoluted issue to say the least.

There are plenty of reasons to restrict social media access to younger Australians. Social media channels are rife with bullying, harassment, and all manner of what can be called inappropriate content. There are also concerns about the amount of time children spend looking at the screens of smartphones and other devices.

Yet parents have been providing their children with mobile/smartphones for decades, for safety and security reasons. Would any ban mean parents are required to take back their children’s smartphones, and replace them with so-called “dumbphones”, capable only of calls and messaging?

Would a ban, were one introduced, be phased in? That is, would young Australians, who have been using social media, and the smartphones they use for access, be told they can no longer do so, because they have suddenly become the wrong age? Imposing an age restriction on the use of social media is truly a significant step.

Gaining access to social media would become a rite of passage for young Australians. Akin to holding a drivers license, being able to vote, or buy alcoholic beverages. But are we looking at the matter the right way? A ban is a quick, easy, fix. If there’s a problem with over exposure to social media, imposing a ban is no better than sweeping the issue under the carpet. Besides, people find ways to circumvent bans and restrictions. That won’t come as a surprise to anyone who was once a teenager.

Like it or not, smartphones and social media are deeply enmeshed in our way of life. They’re not toys and petty distractions. Despite the high noise to signal ratio, they’re tools we use to interact and engage with the world around us. Some Australians make their living solely through social media. Restricting access to younger Australians may be detrimental to their education and even well-being.

Australian Greens party senator, Sarah Hanson-Young, describes the proposed ban as a “knee-jerk” reaction, and says it is the social media companies who should be subject to regulation, not young Australians. Hanson-Young also points out some social media channels are vital for some teenagers:

“We don’t ban kids from going to the beach — we teach them how to swim and make sure they swim between the flags. There are safety measures put in place to keep them safe — flags, lifeguards, adult supervision and swimming lessons. We need to teach children how to use social media and understand there are many positive benefits, particularly for marginalised kids, to being online.”

Given the number of adults in Australia who devote, as if addicted, unhealthy amount of times to phones and social media, some sort of minimum age access seems reasonable. After all, do we really want kids who haven’t even started high-school, spending their days gazing at smartphone screens?

The South Australian state government may be treading a somewhat sensible middle-ground. And middle-ground is what needs to be found here. They propose banning access to social media to children aged under fourteen. Those aged between fourteen and fifteen would require approval from parents or guardians to access social media. Is there merit in this proposal, or not?

It is obvious there is no one, straightforward solution, that will please everyone. As Anthony Albanese, the Australian Prime Minister, says:

We know that it’s not simple and it’s not easy. Otherwise, governments would have responded before.

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