Day: 11 April 2022

Fresh Hell ⇥ annoying.technology

Manuel Grabowski:

As a year-long Twitter user who’s always logged in on all devices, I didn’t really consciously notice how things deteriorated over time. But thanks to the fresh hell that every damn iOS app has its own integrated “browser”, even despite already having an account I now often see what Twitter unleashes on people not willing to succumb to their pleas for signing up.

The mix of desperate clingy behaviours from all kinds of websites — all social networks, but also retail and media and pretty much everything these days — combined with siloed browsers on iOS is a real crappy experience. I know the latter is a privacy feature, but it is not great when seemingly every site begs for your email address. Web marketers and “growth hackers”: nobody likes this. Please stop it.

Behavioural Spam ⇥ garbageday.email

Ryan Broderick, Garbage Day:

Twitter is still a primarily text-based app, which means that syntactical memes can spread across the platform. A good example would be the “me: / nobody:” tweet format. A recent syntactical meme has completely overwhelmed Twitter, though. It starts with the phrase “we’re cancelling each other over…” and then you’re meant to post a “cancellable” take about some niche subject. I’ve seen tweets calling for cancellable takes about everything from Boston’s public transport to ghosts.

This sort of thing has always existed, but it has historically occupied a specific section of a BBS or forum. You could ignore it. In the blended world of a typical Twitter timeline, it seems unavoidable. It would be cool if we could universally minimize these kinds of patterns. But seeing as Twitter still thinks trending topics are a good idea I doubt we will get any controls to reduce popular post formats.

Data Brokers on ‘Last Week Tonight’ ⇥ youtube.com

I have written an awful lot about data brokers for years now and others have been covering this industry for much longer. Yet it persists, and I am glad it is getting the kind of spotlight that John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight” can throw on it. It is a good high-level overview, accurately covering many familiar stories, and will hopefully motivate more comprehensive reforms.

This video is only available in the United States right now, but I am sure you are a clever person.