Way back in 2019 (BC), I summarized why, in 2016, I stopped writing about tech and the Internet. TLDR: I felt like I was always writing and reporting about Negative stuff. Ironically, I never published that blog because it seemed way too negative. 🤣 Today we revisit the Internet to see what has changed, and I will give you TechWite’s ONE Suggestion for Making the Internet Better.
Back in the previous decade, before Covid and so much else, I saw the once promising Internet turning into the mess covered in the categories below:
- Bad Manners, Shaming, and Other Rotten Behavior
- Hacking, Swindling, Blackmail, & Ransom
- Harassment and Sexism
- Amazon, Uber, Monopoly and the New Workplace Overlords
- Net Neutrality
- New Technologies
- Privacy
- Resistance
- Trends
* DATB – (Details at the Bottom) For details, scroll down and read the article titles (with links) that I collected at the time.
None of these issues have gone away —except maybe Net Neutrality—and regular readers will note that I even see some hope here and there. In fact, before I dive into the worst of it, I want to add a couple more hopeful signs:
“Old Data Never Dies“—Or maybe it does! Some companies are actually cleaning up their accounts — allegedly, they respect your privacy and won’t keep your information forever! Here are two examples:
Realism about Likes and Engagement? — There is the whole Elon thing, and I’m not going to give the guy another stage for his drama; we knew months ago that Twitter didn’t have as many users as they claim. So maybe people are catching on to the fakeness of it all?? One can hope. 🙂
eBooks have a future? — Not addressed elsewhere in TechWite, but a long-time issue for me is the limitations of purchased eBooks when copy-protected by Amazon, Apple, et al. They’re often not cheaper than paper, they have some great tech advantages, but basically if you buy an eBook, you are the only person who ever gets to use it. You can’t loan it, share it, give it away, or sell it. So why buy it? I thought Blockchain might be a way that people could “own” eBooks and have all the options of selling, sharing etc. One company is planning to sell textbooks as NFTs. Of course they want to protect the book as their asset, but the technology could be used to allow individuals to OWN and sell eBooks just as if they were “real”.
Pearson plans to sell its textbooks as NFTs | Publishing | The Guardian
Educational publisher’s move into non-fungible tokens is intended to claw back some of the income lost to secondhand sales
— Read on www.theguardian.com/books/2022/aug/02/pearson-plans-to-sell-its-textbooks-as-nfts
The rest of this stuff sounds much like it did in 2017…
#Hacking and #NoPrivacy
LastPass, a Password Manager With Millions of Users, Is Hacked – WSJ
The company said no information was stolen from its more than 33 million users after an unauthorized party accessed its development environment
— Read on www.wsj.com/articles/lastpass-a-password-manager-with-millions-of-users-is-hacked-11661524398
FTC Sues Over Tracking Data That Could Expose Visits to Abortion Clinics – The New York Times
Federal regulators said the sale of geolocation information on tens of millions of smartphones could expose people’s visits to private places.
— Read on www.nytimes.com/2022/08/29/business/ftc-lawsuit-tracking-data-abortion.html
Your Apps Know Where You Were Last Night, and They’re Not Keeping It Secret – The New York Times (2018)
Dozens of companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers and even hedge funds. They say it’s anonymous, but the data shows how personal it is.
— Read on www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/10/business/location-data-privacy-apps.html
And then there’s Facebook...
Read this Felix Krause blog from just the other day. (It’s not much different than the 10 articles about Facebook in the DATB.)
iOS Privacy: Instagram and Facebook can track anything you do on any website in their in-app browser · Felix Krause
— Read on krausefx.com/blog/ios-privacy-instagram-and-facebook-can-track-anything-you-do-on-any-website-in-their-in-app-browser
Facebook, Meta, Zuckerburg and everything he owns represent the biggest threat to creativity, safety, security on the Internet, and life as we would like to know it. For all the times he and the company have been caught lying, stealing data, selling it illegally, monopolizing, crushing competition, etc. etc. etc., they’ve never admitted culpability. Oops! We’ll have to do better! Poor Mark! He wakes up every day to find somebody wants to put him down. He’s a victim!! Right.
So What’s the one thing you could do to make the Internet a better place? Delete Facebook. I don’t mean sign out and stay off for a few weeks or months and write an article about how you “Quit Facebook” (you’ll find these all over the Internet). They’re fake quitters. I’m saying DELETE FACEBOOK and never go back to it, never. (Most people don’t understand all the thieving corrosive technology behind the “friendly” interface of Fakebook. I don’t. But I AM TECHWITE, and I know enough to tell you to avoid it.)
Facebook is a time wasting, drama-generating cesspool of scammers and criminals that encourages people to treat each other badly. Never, ever, ever use Facebook or have it installed on your phone or iPad. If you are tempted to go to Facebook via a web browser, don’t. Before you do, learn all about private browsing and clearing your cache, and all the other stuff you have to do to wipe the digital leeches that Facebook will attach to your identity just by using a browser. Unfortunately, this probably applies to Instagram and Mark’s Metaverse, and every other company or product he buys and corrupts or destroys. But let’s keep it simple. #DeleteFacebook
—TechWite Peace Out 🤙🏻
*DATB (below)
The Times article (above) tempts with the idea of an alternative to the competitive, super-public, extrovert dominated world of fake friends and insincere “likes”. But, the NYT never seems to escape from that social norm, suggesting instead the candy sweet illusion of Instagram “Stories”.
Dear Millennial, you are aging. 
TechWite 