Excursions

I read this interesting perspective from Bálint where he argues that “Chrome is a Google Service that happens to include a Browser Engine”. I understand where he is coming from, but I believe the thought process needs to be dealt with and curbed before it gets commonly accepted.

Sure, Google would want to believe that Chrome is just one of their many services — it suits their business model. When they can move their trackers (and eventually ads) right to the tool that people access the internet with, they would know what everyone’s doing on the internet. But Google should not be allowed to get away by dumping the idea down its user’s throat. Sure, normal people may not be able to differentiate how logging in to a service and to Chrome is different. Or how login/session cookies for Google may screw up the security model on a shared computer.

But that exactly is the reason why people who understand better need to voice their disapproval. It is easy to say that it’s not a big deal as I am already better informed to not use Chrome. But it is also reckless — Chrome has already become a de facto browser for mainstream users. It’s a wrong precedent then to let people who cannot fully grasp (or aren’t inclined to out of sheer neglect) the basic underpinnings of the open web to drive what’s acceptable for a browser, and on the web. If that was allowed, Net neutrality would already have been a lost battle worldwide. Such decisions tend to be uninformed and harm the community in the longer run.

An internet service is a different entity, it serves a specific purpose. It solves a specific problem that an end user has. Gmail is an email client. YouTube is a video sharing service. Google Search is… well, it has long since stopped being just a search engine. But, one gets the idea. You access a URL and it brings you to the service.

Chrome is not that. Chrome is a tool that allows users access these different services. And it is better if it stays that way. It’s already bad that all browsers come with an incognito mode by default. It would be important that we do not introduce another mode just to go incognito from the owners of the browsers.

I am sure Bálint will agree and his final thought kind of sums it well.

Part of me feels that this Chrome shared computer issue that Googlers mentioned is real, but it’s also just too convenient to solve this by tieing Chrome closer to Google, you know?

A brutal takedown of Facebook from John Oliver, and he still didn’t touch so many of the nasty problems from across the world that Facebook has caused. The platform is indeed shit. Or as John puts it, even worse.

Calling Facebook a toilet is a little unfair to toilets. Because they make shit go away whereas Facebook retains shit, disseminate it amongst your acquaintances and remind you of shit from 7 years ago, allowing corporations to put more shit in front of you. There is a purity and integrity to toilets that Facebook seriously lacks.

There is a fascinating conversation on episode 97 of the Criminal podcast with the now 99 year old Benjamin Ferencz. He primarily talks about his experiences as an investigator of Nazi war crimes after the World War II. There are some gut-wrenching stories about the atrocities he witnessed against Jews, and against humanity. He also shares his experiences of his trial against the “high-ranking members of Nazi Germany’s death squad”, a trial that he called “the plea of humanity to the law”.

But towards the end of the episode, there is this heart-warming tale from Mr. Ferencz. He talks about his wife who is 5 years older than him; whom he has been married to for last 72 years; whom he had never had a quarrel with. And he believes there is a very simple reason for that.

“First of all, I am not suggesting we didn’t have differences of opinion. But we never raised our voice. We never shouted. We never pounded a table. Because it’s mutual respect, and caring for each other. They have a funny word for it that I don’t like - love. I don’t like the word. Because you could love a piece of cheese, you love that lovely day. I could love to go home. I would love to finish this interview. And I say if you say caring for somebody, that reflects better. And my wife now needs my care. This is the pay back time.”

Now and again, it helps to keep things simple - I guess experience must imbue you with such clarity of thoughts. From all the myriad of swanky adulations for the word and the feeling of “love”, I would prefer the simplicity of “caring for somebody”.

I believe “all data is anonymised” has to be the biggest lie all these data hoarding and advertising companies tell its customers. With the amount of data they have, they can build an extremely accurate profile of any user, doesn’t matter if individual data point is anonymised.

This is such a fascinating read — I don’t think it is a stretch to think there would be teens who would be overwhelmed by the burden of being social digitally. The below excerpt made be really ponder how a generation older behaves might me affecting the generation next.

The fact that Gen Z have had their every move documented online since before they could walk, talk, or even control their bowels helps explain their antipathy to social media: it makes sense for them to strive for privacy, as soon as they reach the age when they have a choice over their online image.

“I’ve seen parents post pictures of their child’s first potty online,” says Amy Binns of the University of Central Lancashire. “You think: ’Why are you doing this to your child? They wouldn’t want this to be public.”

This article has left me with so questions to mull over.

I read this. And then I read this again. I checked the source to make sure it isn’t from The Onion. It wasn’t.

We know that people want a relevant Twitter timeline. One way to do this is by unfollowing people they don’t engage with regularly. We ran an incredibly limited test to surface accounts that people were not engaging with to check if they’d like to unfollow them

If a platform has to tell its users to not follow some of its other users, you have to think something is inherent wrong with how they running it. I find it fascinating that Twitter will suggest “good” citizens of its platform to unfollow some who aren’t. But they would not grow a spine and just bar those problematic users from engaging on their platform. Crazy.

We need a directory of microbloggers. This fact is clear from the sheer number of discussions that happen on the Micro.blog platform asking for recommendations on users by interests, or geography or something else.

I just wanted to put down my thoughts on what such a directory would need to have for it to be helpful and not polluted with mess.

1. Directory needs to have a vouch mechanism. A user mentions some information about himself, his followers vouch for that. And the vouch’s what matters. Without such a mechanism, the system is prone to abuse, where people can pollute it with catchy tags without nothing to back it up with. We know how such systems are gamed. SEO. App Store tag words.
2. Other users should be able to associate more information about a person, an extension of vouch. They only get shown if the concerned person accepts.
3. Group types need to be limited. Possible options for groups need to be predefined. So geography - possibly timezones or countries, interests - sports or tech or writing etc, current events followed. Without this, it’s again prone to abuse. This may also make aggregation/interface easier to manage. Tagmoji is already a good example.
4. As Brad Enslen opined, may be it should not be limited to micro.blog platform. One should be able to provide other details too. May be via IndieAuth signin?
5. An option to add to directory directly from a post would be handy. It may also allow building metadata for the vouch system, if needed.
6. A person’s interests, geography, isn’t it an extension of one’s identity? Can it not be captured as part of one’s h-card?

Can such a directory exist outside of Micro.blog? Sure (I even had basic one running on Micro.threads dev). But for it to be helpful it would need a significant number of users adding their information to such a service. I believe it fits best with the platform, as the list of users is already available. With some metadata added, a directory page, just like there are Tagmoji pages for posts, can be enabled for users. This will avoid creating a parallel user list, which will always be lesser than what would exists with the platform.

Directory can be made as tricky as it can get. But it is sure one is required as the number of microbloggers grow. Blogrolls, personal directories on individual blogs are good starts. We need a place where that can be brought all together. And displayed easily on demand.

There is a lot of chatter recently around the features on Twitter/Facebook that should be incorporated in the new¹ social media platforms. Or even the lack of the Twitter/Facebook like features that make the platforms better. Just look at the timelines at any of these platforms and you are bound to see some meta discussion on these lines. You will see it on Micro.blog. You will see it on Mastodon.

Let’s just take a couple of examples. Here’s how Mastodon’s boost is presented as better.

Boosts are essentially like retweets, with one key difference: there’s no option to add your own commentary. You simply can’t post something awful with a message saying how awful it is—all you can do is boost something awful without commentary.

Well, I can’t be the only one to remember the early Twitter days when retweets were just that, without commentary. It was all the third party clients that had an option to “quote” tweet. Remember those days of appending “RT:”, etc? We were using the feature and Twitter was forced to officially support it.

Same was the case with hashtags, another feature that made experience on Twitter a nightmare - but was brought in because users were “enjoying” it. We kept boasting we brought the hashtags to Twitter and now we want nothing to do with it.

Don’t get me wrong here. I do not want to sound like a Twitter apologist. The platform is in a dire state and their current and previous owners are rightly to be blamed here. As I recently wrote, I have no sympathy for these folks. Examples mentioned above are not the primary reasons why Twitter, and Facebook, are struggling.

But it is worth considering the fact that many of the features being touted as responsible for Twitter’s fall are ones introduced by its users.

So a plea to all the decision makers behind these “new” platforms - don’t let us, your users, drive the roadmap for you. We cannot foresee what’s right. You on the other hand can decide where you want to take your platform. That may mean some people won’t ride along and get left behind. But, at times, it is better to follow what’s right in the long run than chase the immediate growth.

I know people behind both Micro.blog and Mastodon are making these design decisions very carefully², and are not heeding to the pressure.

So just stick to your beliefs, Manton, Eugen and others. Take your time and decide what’s right for us.

There was one (last?) missing piece in the quest of mine to simplify posting to my blog - and that was photos. Most of my posts originate on micropub clients, mainly Micro.blog. But photos couldn’t without a media endpoint. Not any more. Blotpub now has one in-built.

I recently wanted to create a new view (a page) for all my social posts. Apparently, even if you create the page there are still few additional configurations to be done for the template to make it available at a particular link.

Configuration to be done is to define a route which will serve that particular page. This can be done on the web editor at Blot dashboard in the template section.

You can create a new ‘view’ on the web editor in the view section of the templates (available at https://blot.im/template/<theme-name>/view).

Once you create a new view, go to settings page for the newly created view and specify its route. For example, the route (or URL) for archives.html is set to /archives. This enables the Blot engine to render the given template view at the configured URL. You can explore the archives view for more options.