LinkedIn is collecting user data for AI training

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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.

Australian high school allows students to study from home one day a week

19 September 2024

Chevalier College, an Australian high-school near the NSW town of Bowral, about a ninety-minute drive south of Sydney, will allow some senior students to study from home one day a week. The decision follows a year-long trial of the scheme.

The school argues the traditional five-day face-to-face learning model fails to adequately prepare students for the future. It said: “The world has changed, and education needs to move with it. This requires a more flexible, adaptable and personalised approach to education”.

It’s a smart move, given students may eventually find themselves working from home once they leave school. It’s also a great primer for university, where much study is self-directed, and the learning environment is structured a little differently. I wonder if other schools will follow suit, or are perhaps already doing something like this.

And bonus points for choosing Monday as the study from day (though that is of course the day most public/bank holidays fall).

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education, trends

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.

Coffee drinkers ditch coffee as price rises continue to bite

13 September 2024

Australian food critic Terry Durack, writing for the Sydney Morning Herald:

Coffee’s changing. The cost of beans continues to rise, and everyone is on the lookout for alternatives. Old-fashioned espresso coffee is in danger of being shouldered aside, just as cow’s milk is making way for oat, almond and soy.

With coffee prices rising, people are apparently looking for alternatives to coffee-based brews, and maybe I don’t blame them.

A month or so ago, I bought a small cappuccino after stopping by a place in Redfern — one of the inner suburbs of Sydney — for five dollars. That’s about what I usually pay, for a large drink, but this was a small serve. A super small serve. The cup must’ve been two-thirds the size of the usual sized small/regular takeaway coffee cups. The alternatives to cow’s milk I get. But now I see why some people are keen to try alternatives to their once daily caffeine fix.

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coffee, economics, trends

Facebook has been scraping the pages of Australians since 2007

12 September 2024

Jake Evans, writing for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation:

Facebook has admitted that it scrapes the public photos, posts and other data of Australian adult users to train its AI models and provides no opt-out option, even though it allows people in the European Union to refuse consent.

For sure, Facebook operates a little differently in Australia. According to information provided by Melinda Claybaugh, Meta’s global privacy director, who was speaking at an Australian parliamentary inquiry into AI adoption, the social network has been collecting user data since 2007.

Only Facebook members who set their profiles to private, were spared. Australians, unlike residents of the European Union who are protected by strong privacy laws, also do not have the option to opt-out of having their data collected, if they elect to make their Facebook page publicly visible.

One can only wonder what sense Meta’s AI technologies made of the content posted by Australians to their Facebook pages, and what conclusions they drew about us.

Indie Web, small web, social web, whatever web, my web

4 September 2024

There’s been a bit of a surge in discussion recently about Indie Web, and seemingly what it means to be a true adherent. This time the focus appears to be about what I’m going to call technical proficiency. From what I can gather, having your own website, with your own domain name, and your own content, isn’t quite making the Indie Web grade, in certain quarters.

Some people, who have the website, the domain, and the content, say they feel excluded because they’re apparently not doing more. Not doing more technical stuff. And I’d be in that category. It’s strange talk really. After all, Indie Web is many things to many people. There’s no Indie Web head office, dictating what we must, or must not do. But here, thankfully, is the sort of clarity we need:

Use wordpress if you want. Use Blogger. Hell, use Frontpage 98 if you want. Or learn some HTML And CSS and type it all up in notepad.exe. Or just HTML, don’t even bother with the CSS. Just make it yours.

Just make it yours. This was the web I always knew. I just came here to self-publish. To speak to whoever would listen to me. I started out with static HTML pages, on Notepad. Then I started adding CSS. I eventually arrived, ten years later, where I still am today, with WordPress.

Of course there were cashed up, corporate, players around in the late 1990’s trying to turn a profit on the web. But we, the personal, non-commercial, website people, who later became known as bloggers, co-existed quite harmoniously with this big-end of the web. We did our thing; they did theirs. And both parties, from what I saw, seemed to prosper in their own ways.

But that was back in the good old days.

Indie Web to me — and the definition seems to be subjective to some (quite some) degree — is a foil to what the web has become today, twenty to twenty-five years later. This despite the founding of the IndieWeb group in 2011. Indie Web, at its essence is our own place away from the corporate web, the social media behemoths, and the algorithms preventing us from finding the content we really seek.

I’ll admit to be being somewhat befuddled by the likes of webmentions, micro-formats, and ActivityPub protocol (which actually baffles me fully at present). Clearly these technologies serve a purpose, but in reality they don’t help me much with my primary objective here, which is to write.

If I’m not Indie Web enough then for someone, they can go somewhere else. But, with an attitude like that, I don’t know how much more “Indie Web” I could be. Well maybe. Thing is, I’ve never quite considered myself to be naturally Indie Web. Not one-hundred percent, as much as I like the general concept. Instead, I’ve often seen myself has being independent.

I’ve written as much on my about page:

The word disassociated has a number of meanings, but in this context it means to do my own thing, to go my own way, to have my own gig, to be independent.

So perhaps, independent web is a more suitable moniker in my case.

Hell, use Frontpage 98 if you want.

Perhaps though we could leave FrontPage out of this. I too had an ill-fated, though infinitesimally brief, run-in with the Microsoft (MS) product, many moons ago. FrontPage was a WYSIWYG website design editor with all good intentions, but terrible execution. What on earth, for example, were those server extensions that MS kept banging on about?

By 1998, the web was picking up momentum. People just wanted to get a website, usually a personal/family affair, online. And they wanted to do so pronto. They didn’t have the time or patience to learn about HTML, CSS, and FTP, let alone propriety server extensions. Too many, FrontPage must have seemed like the answer to their prayers. Until they opened the box*.

But look, if FrontPage is how you Indie Web, or just web, then don’t let me stop you. But please don’t come asking me for any help with those server extensions.

* this in the days when software apps literally arrived in a box.

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blogs, IndieWeb, technology, trends

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