Month: February 2023

Twitter Is Killing Off the Fun Bots ⇥ buzzfeednews.com

Katie Notopoulos and Pranav Dixit, Buzzfeed News:

Álex Barredo, who runs @BigTechAlert, told BuzzFeed News he’s open to paying a small fee to keep the popular bot running, but not if it costs $100 a month. He also has other options. He’s aware that most of the actual spam bots don’t even use the API to operate (which means charging for API access isn’t really going to wipe out spam), so one option he’s considering is to rework the bot so it doesn’t need the API. He’s also considering either open-sourcing it or moving it to its own website or a different platform.

Diego Mendoza, of Semafor, assembled a list of bots that are likely to disappear. My favourite:

For all the geopolitics geeks out there, @FlagsMashupBot randomly mashes two flags together to create new, sometimes outlandish designs. Some of the more recent design include “Soctlan” : the combined flags of Scotland and Reunion.

I am also disappointed we will be losing art built on Twitter’s API — projects like Tuang T’s “#Adulting”. I have exhibited art which uses the API, too. Any artist relying on a third-party service has to know its ongoing availability cannot be guaranteed, but this is a crappy way to bow out.

Update: Twitter also wants to charge companies one thousand dollars every month to show their accounts are verified and legitimate. Good luck with that.

TikTok Opens Transparency Centre Stunt ⇥ theverge.com

Alex Heath, the Verge:

[…] I and a handful of other journalists were invited to the company’s Los Angeles headquarters earlier this week for the first media tour of its “Transparency and Accountability Center.” It’s a space that, like the political discussion about TikTok these days, seems more about virtue signaling than anything else. Company officials say the center is designed for regulators, academics, and auditors to learn more about how the app works and its security practices. We were told that a politician-who-would-not-be-named had toured it the day before. TikTok eventually plans to open more centers in Washington, DC, Dublin, and Singapore.

[…]

The interactive part of the center I was allowed to experience included a room with iMacs running a mock version of the software TikTok says its moderators use to review content. There was another room with iMacs running “code simulators.” While that sounded intriguing, it was really just a basic explanation of TikTok’s algorithm that seemed designed for a typical member of Congress to grasp. Close-up photos of the computer screens weren’t allowed. And despite it being called a transparency center, TikTok’s PR department made everyone agree to not quote or directly attribute comments made by employees leading the tour.

Casey Newton:

The heart of the presentation comes early, when the company explains to us the basic outline of Project Texas: its $1.5 billion plan to move all data attached to American users to the United States, and to put into place various governance, compliance and auditing systems that will keep the company honest.

Under the terms of our visit, we are not allowed to quote from the Project Texas portion of the discussion. At Lawfare, which appears to have attended a similar presentation, Matt Perault and Samm Sacks do a great job describing the various features of the effort.

I have fewer specific concerns about TikTok than some others; my problem is with the overall privacy landscape which allows apps like TikTok to become so dependent on user data. But anyone can see it is an idiotic look for TikTok’s big public relations splash about “transparency” when it is not on the record and detailed photographs are not permitted. What a fumble.

Apple Drops Its Industrial Design Leadership Role ⇥ bloomberg.com

Mark Gurman, Bloomberg:

The iPhone maker’s vice president of industrial design, Evans Hankey, won’t be replaced when she leaves the company in the coming months, according to people with knowledge of the decision, who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are private. An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.

Instead, the company’s core group of about 20 industrial designers will report to Jeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer. The company will also give larger roles to a group of Apple’s longest-tenured designers. Hankey has reported to Williams since taking the job in 2019, when top designer Jony Ive left to start his own firm.

Alarming as this sounds on first read, I am not sure what to make of this. It seems significant only if you ignore the past few years of Apple’s history.

As I wrote in October, when Gurman broke the news of Hankey’s departure, Apple never put anyone in Ive’s old Senior Vice President position; Hankey’s title lacks the “Senior” part of that job title, despite assuming the steep responsibility of shaping Apple’s hardware. The team there has reversed course on controversial design decisions while establishing a new identity in devices like the M2 MacBook Air, MacBook Pro line, and the Apple Watch Ultra.

At the same time, hardware design appears to be taking a less prominent role in Apple’s pitch to customers. Recent product marketing webpages no longer include a “Design” tab in the top menu, and Apple no longer produces videos showcasing the team’s efforts; the most recent one I can find is for the Apple Card. Despite the reduced emphasis, it seems like Apple’s industrial designers are at a peak of quality, class, and style.

My biggest design-related Apple complaints in recent years are in software. I am sure I am not alone in filing several bug reports containing the phrase “insufficient contrast”, and the expansion of back button interfaces in MacOS — now in System Settings — is worrisome. Apple has leadership in that area and plenty of skillful designers on staff. There is still tremendous work being done in that area, but the misses are eating at me.

Just because there is no longer an industrial design figurehead, that does not mean Apple’s products will slip in thoughtfulness and quality. But the symbolic loss of a design head combined with its reduced emphasis in the company’s messaging feels unlike Apple. And making the Camry-driving Williams the de facto head of the industrial design team is not the most confidence-inspiring move.

Twitter Says It Will Begin Charging for API Access ⇥ twitter.com

Twitter:

Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API, both v2 and v1.1. A paid basic tier will be available instead.

It was only a matter of time before this happened, but it still sucks — and with only a week’s notice. As usual for the new Twitter, there are no details about what this means and no coordination among what is left of its teams — its developer site proudly still says it permits “free access”.

I am obviously not posting about all the changes Twitter is making because they do not excite or interest me, but this one is important. Twitter had generous limits on its free access, though it also charged for more intensive use cases like those of social media scheduling tools. This will impact hundreds of other apps which offer modest Twitter integrations, researchers and academics, and this very website.

I use a plugin on this site to publish posts to its Twitter feed, and it relies on API access. Depending on how much that costs for a tiny use case like my own, I may not find it worthwhile to pay. Posting to Twitter is now reserved for its first-party apps and website, which obviously makes the process more manual. So, no promises.

If you read Pixel Envy by following it on Twitter, I recommend you subscribe to its JSON or RSS feed, or follow the site on Mastodon.

Update: Apparently there will now be a write-only free tier for so-called “good” bots. It is going great, everyone.

Meta Twists the Knife in the Backs of Laid-Off Employees ⇥ cnbc.com

Jordan Novet, CNBC:

Facebook parent Meta Platforms said in its quarterly earnings statement on Wednesday that it has increased its share repurchase authorization by $40 billion.

In 2022 the social network operator bought back about $28 billion in stock, according to the statement.

[…]

Meta’s fourth-quarter results surpassed analysts’ revenue estimates, which helped send shares up more than 17% after hours.

Before increasing its buyback fund, it had nearly $11 billion remaining.

I am going to take a brave punt that shareholders were less jazzed about revenue modestly exceeding expectations and — and this is just a hunch — their excitement may actually come from this massive share buyback scheme, which comes just a few months after announcing the layoffs of thousands of workers. Paying for those severace packages is part of the $4.2 billion of “restructuring” costs from 2022, and Meta is reportedly not finished with dismissing staff. It sure looks cruel to spend another $40 billion to prop up the share price shortly after upending the lives of eleven thousand people — some of whom are probably in the United States on a work visa — but maybe I am too soft for capital-B Business.

Is It 1987 Again? ⇥ sfba.social

Harry McCracken:

Your 1987 tech update: Now that cell phones have dropped in price to $3,000, are just the size of a small briefcase, weigh only 10 pounds, and can run for two hours on a charge, they’re finally ready for prime time.

Kind of interesting to read the article McCracken is summarizing in the months before Apple is rumoured to begin production of its unannounced virtual reality headset. The first version of that product will, apparently, have an external battery pack which will permit two hours’ use, and cost about $3,000. An optimistic view is for this headset to be to the future of computing what 1987’s cellphones were to the iPhone of thirty years later. Whatever the case, it seems like this will be an interesting year ahead.