Recent Facebook leaks have prompted an avalanche of suggestions for fixing social media’s negative effects on society. These include demands for increased oversight by executives and boards of companies, regulators, or both. However, these proposals do not address the main problem of the attention-economy, which cannot be fixed by top-down control. The problem lies at...
Tag: social media
How to Fix Social Media
Around two o’clock in the afternoon on October 30, 1973, a disc jockey at the New York City radio station WBAI played a track called “Filthy Words” from comedian George Carlin’s latest album. “I was thinking one night about the words you couldn’t say on the public airwaves,” Carlin began. He then rattled off seven...
Super apps – The platform for the post-app era
The world’s largest social media companies could evolve into super apps over the next few years. They will be able to facilitate a greater number of online activities. Although they were initially created to keep friends and family in touch or entertain, social media networks like Facebook, Snap, TikTok and others will be increasingly important...
A Five-Minute Guide to Clubhouse
Not many know about Clubhouse, which is an invitation-only audio-based chat app. The app is an iOS app based on voice and allows people worldwide to chat and meet new people. You can join in on different conversations on varying topics. You can choose to listen or participate in the discussion, just like in a...
The two sides of the Clubhouse coin: does exclusivity equal elitism?
In the era of social media, it naturally invokes a lot of excitement when a new platform takes off and starts shaping our common online space. Clubhouse has given it another spin with limiting access to the party, which gave way to a lot of controversy. Neticle had to investigate… Clubhouse, the invite-only, audio-based social...
Proximity Chat
During the pandemic we’ve gotten used to a primarily virtual social and work life. Meetings take place on platforms like Zoom or Jitsi and are working reasonable well. Watching your coworker with a video-stream is surprisingly effective and generates a kind of remote closeness. Online workouts do not involve sharing the same sweatty gym and...
WhatsApp will let you shop directly from chats | Engadget
Facebook is extending WhatsApp with shopping features. While WhatsApp has had cataloge features in the past, they appear to be limited to that what Facebook’s now previewing. It’s not yet clear, how the system works, but it could be something along these lines: A user messages a business The business replys with a link to...
Daring Fireball: Online Privacy Should Be Modeled on Real-World Privacy
John Gruber from Daring Fireball gives a very good description of how online ad tracking would work in the physical world: Imagine if you were out shopping, went into a drug store, examined a few bottles of sunscreen, but left the store without purchasing anything. And then immediately a stranger approached you with an offer...
iOS 14 privacy settings will tank ad targeting business, Facebook warns | Ars Technica
cache hit 1167:single/related:d5f16d9fcf20b60755becc1a3f964ce4 empThe imminent changes of the privacy settings of the iOS 14 will severely limit Facebook’s ability to track users’ activity across their app ecosystem and the Internet as a whole using the IDFA. Ultimately, this will prevent Facebook from showing targeted ads to users inside other, non-Facebook apps on iPhones. In a...
On the potential Impact of banning Political Ads on Social Media
Worth reading: this Wired article that discusses the potential impact of banning political ads on social media. Political Ads serve as entry point to phony astroturf communities. For example, the now infamous Internet Research Agency (IRA for short) purchased only 3400 Facebook and Instagram ads. Compare this to the over 61500 Facebook posts, 116000 Instagram...
