Werd I/O

I remember standing in the pulpit of an Oxford church, reading a passage from the New Testament in my 9 year-old voice, while my classmates laughed as I mispronounced the names and stumbled over the places. I had never really read the Bible, although I'd had little pieces of it read to me at school. I was gamely trying, but intention was worthless. I wasn't a part of the club. I didn't go to church every Sunday; I didn't learn Bible stories at home; and worst of all, I didn't believe.

Unlike the US, where separation of church and state is enshrined in law, Britain is still a Christian country. Some of the schools - in fact, for most of my school career, the best schools - are cofunded with the Church of England. Anybody from any faith (or in my case, no faith) can attend for free, just as they can at a secular state school. But make no mistake: hymns will be sung and Bible lessons will be told.

In truth, I found it kind of fun. They're fascinating stories, after all. Somewhere there's footage of me singing in a choir as part of Songs of Praise, the BBC's weekly celebration of Christian faith. I can also report that at my school they took great care to teach us about all major faiths without prejudice, and we visited mosques, synagogues, and temples.

Of course, it was Christianity, rather than any other religion, that we were surrounded with every day. To this day, I can probably recite six or seven childrens' songs about Jesus, and in doing so, recall the smell of the varnished wood in the school hall and the feeling of my crossed legs slowly going numb. I remember coming home and earnestly telling my mother that "the Bible isn't just one book; it's a whole library". There was certainly a division between the kids who went to church in their own time - who were actually a part of the culture imparted by the school - and those of us who were tourists.

I don't believe it did me harm - nor did I actually realize until I was a much older child that people believed these stories were true - but I also don't think these schools should exist. I have nothing against religion or people who believe in it, but I do believe in the American idea that church and state should not mix. Should I have children, I would not bring them up in a religious context at all.

Still, I would make sure they understood religion, and could make their own decisions for themselves when they were older. I came away with a real appreciation for the community that people build through faith. It provides a kind of social glue, and a safety net. I'm not a believer, and I have serious problems with religion's imperative to unquestioningly accept what you're told, but I appreciate and envy those things. I can also see that there's great comfort in the concept of an afterlife.

For me, there's nothing after you die. Consciousness fades to black, your body decomposes, and its component chemicals find its way back into the ground. Ashes to ashes; dust to dust; a transient sentience returned to the whole of the earth except as memories held by the transiently sentient beings whose lives you were lucky enough to touch.

My sister, who is cut from the same ideological cloth but with far greater creativity, turned this idea into a song. Our mother has asked that it be played at her funeral.

For the last month, I've spent a lot of my time at the hospital, at my mother's side. It's serious. I've been privilege to be able to be there and spend time with her; we've all come together to support her, which I think says wonderful things about my immediate family. There have been operations and blood transfusions and scary, touch-and-go moments. And there have been stories and laughter and shared memories.

It's hard for me to think of much else. My concentration is shot. I can feel the cortisol in my limbs. It's been one of the hardest periods of my life.

And I find myself wishing that I believed. For the comforting idea of the afterlife, sure, but also for the community that belief can bring you. A sense of belonging outside of a family structure. A sense that someone is looking out for you.

Those things aren't enough for me to believe in themselves: there's no deity or magic in my worldview. And I'm fully aware that for many people, particularly in vulnerable communities, a church is not at all a comforting space, and organized religion can often be a safe haven for bigotry. So I'm not missing a church as such. But I do feel a need for more connectedness, and for some kind of safety.

Really, I wish I could wave a magic wand and have everyone I love be healthy again, and have life go back to normal, and enjoy their company forever, and go about doing all the things that normal people do. I wish I could call on a supernatural power to fix everything. Instead, all I can do - the very most that's in my power - is be present, try to comfort, and remember.

Today, President Trump is hosting a social media summit at the White House. Rather than inviting actual social media platforms and experts to have a substantive conversation about the real problems inherent to the medium and how we might fix them, he has chosen to gather a collection of extremists. Among them is a site called Minds - in fact the only social networking platform invited to the summit.

One of the dangers of building an open source networking platform is that anyone can use it for anything. Elgg, an open source social networking platform made by my first startup, was used for all kinds of things: we knew it was going to be a success when non-profits in Colombia began to use it to share between themselves. It's named after the small village in Switzerland that my dad's family comes from - the Werdmuller von Elggs - and I poured my heart and soul into it. Generally, I have been very proud of the things it has been used for: when learned that Oxfam was using it to train aid workers, my heart swelled.

A few years ago, Bill Ottman reached out to me because he was using it as the basis of his new social network, Minds. By that time, Elgg was long in the tooth, and a lot of changes need to be made. (It wouldn't surprise me if, today, most of the Elgg code was gone. And honestly, that would make me feel a little better.) Nonetheless, it helped them get off the ground. Last year, Minds raised a $6M Series A round from one investor, the venture arm of Overstock.com.

Yesterday, Vice reported this:

A previous Motherboard investigation found that miliant neo-Nazi groups connected to Atomwaffen Division—a violent American hate group connected to several murders—was using Minds as a platform for recruiting and spreading propaganda.

To be clear, I don't believe that Bill is a white supremacist. But it's also clear that deliberately lax moderation allows neo-Nazis to thrive on the platform and use it for recruitment. Minds describes itself as a platform for free speech: in other words, within the bounds of US law, anything goes.

Today there are concentration camps on the border. Children are dying. In the midst of this, Trump's approval ratings are at the highest point of his Presidency. This is a dangerous point in history - although, of course, not one without precedent, as groups like Never Again Action are right to point out. "The Jews will not replace us" is a common chant at right-wing marches, based on the idea that immigration is a Jewish conspiracy to replace white people.

My great grandfather fled Ukraine to avoid the White Army, which was burning Jewish villages and enacting mass killings in the region. My grandfather was captured by the Nazis. My dad and his entire immediate family were held in Japanese concentration camps, and my grandmother wailed through her nightmares every single night until the day she died.

This isn't principle; it's personal. It's personal for me, and for my friends who have been doxxed and received death threats for being feminists. It's personal for my friends who have been subject to the rapid increase in hate crimes. It's personal for my trans friends.

There's a word for people who aid Nazis: collaborators. There is nothing virtuous about standing up for the free speech of people who wish to see entire demographics of people murdered. To argue that it's "just speech" is disingenuous: words and stories have enormous power to persuade and to lead. To argue that the best way to defeat speech with more speech is similarly so: it inherently gives both sides a level platform, elevating extremism and giving it more integrity than it deserves. Scratch the surface even briefly and the subtext emerges: if inclusion and equal rights are really so great, the argument goes, surely it can defeat the opposition in debate?

These people, my argument goes, can go fuck themselves.

Recently, the white supremacist social network Gab decided to fork Mastodon, forcing that platform to release a strong statement decrying their values. I believe this was the right move. If Known or Unlock were used for hate, I would do the same. Even though it's a full ten years since I left the Elgg project, I'm finding myself writing this blog post.

I am deeply ashamed to have even a mild association with Minds. I think the free speech argument it uses is deeply flawed. I am also thinking hard about another set of principles: namely, the free software ideals that allowed Gab and Minds to adopt existing platforms in the first place.

In the same way that Minds shrugging its shoulders at the presence of hate on its platform is woefully inadequate, an open source social network shrugging its shoulders at its use by extremists is worthy of disdain. It is not enough, to say the least. If we're talking about abstract principles, the principles of human life, inclusion, and equality obviously override the principle of being able to share and freely distribute source code. Code is never more important than life. Genocide is always a bigger problem than software distribution licenses. Hopefully this is obvious.

While I accept that it runs counter to the stated principles of the free software movement, I believe we need a new set of licenses that explicitly forbid using software to facilitate hate or hate groups. The Southern Poverty Law Center defines a hate group as "an organization that — based on its official statements or principles, the statements of its leaders, or its activities — has beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics", which is in line with the FBI's definition.

I don't want software I write to be used by these groups. Ever. For any reason. I don't want to help them even accidentally, ever again. And I think that principle - the principle of never causing harm or facilitating hate - significantly outweighs every other one.

The saddest thing to me is that this is probably a controversial idea. But I would much rather be a part of the anti-fascist software community than the libertarian free market community if the latter absolves itself of its culpability in the spread of white supremacy.

Update: I fixed Bill's name. It's Bill Ottman. Apologies for the earlier error.

Books

This is my first post since June 1st - and by that you can probably discern that I had a tough month. My mother has had two extended hospital stays, and my priority is always to be with my family and help however I can. As much as I'd like to remain calm and collected during these times, they're obviously stressful - so even when I had the time to read, I didn't have the mental energy or stillness of mind.

I did, however, manage to get to the end of one book:

Memes to Movements by An Xiao Mina. A thorough exploration of how memes shaped political movements and vice versa. Thought provoking and full of possibilities; I think, against all odds, this book made me excited about the internet again.

I'm heading into the hospital later this morning. I hope we all get to have more peace and health in July.

Notable Articles

Death of the calorie. It turns out there are better ways to measure what we put into our bodies. And it's simply not true that all calories are equal.

The Catastrophist, or: On coming out as trans at 37. "What I believed for too long, and what you might believe too, is that your body is not a gift but an obligation. That it is not who you are but a series of tasks assigned to you by the accident of your birth. This is not true. The best obligations — the only real obligations — are chosen. Your life is your life. It is worth fighting for."

Let’s Hear It for the Average Child. "To the daydreamer and the window-gazer, to the one who startles when called on by the teacher or nudged by a classmate, whose report card invariably praises your good mind but laments your lack of focus: We are grateful for your brown study. Here’s to the wondering reveries of the dreamers and the dawdlers, for the real aha! moments in life are those that cannot be summoned by will." It's me!

What HBO’s “Chernobyl” Got Right, and What It Got Terribly Wrong. Chernobyl is amazing television, and you should see it. But it's like we're still afraid of the Soviet Union, and rather than represent it in a nuanced way, on television it's always a place where people are forced to do things by the barrel of a gun. It's as if our own capitalist society is the only one that people could possibly participate in willingly - which simply isn't true.

Uber’s Path of Destruction. Damning. I don't use Uber and I urge you not to, too.

The Roots of Big Tech Run Disturbingly Deep. I've become an enormous fan of Tim Wu through this year's reading project. In this opinion piece in the New York Times, he and Stuart A Thompson examine the acquisitions made by large tech companies, and ask why the government hasn't challenged a single one of them.

‘I Can No Longer Continue to Live Here’. The experience of Honduran women is an international tragedy. It's important to understand why they're coming to the US border. We should be giving them asylum. Instead, of course, we're putting them in concentration camps.

Dissent in Nazi Germany. We rarely hear about peaceful protests in Nazi Germany, but they existed. It's shocking to me how many people don't understand that Hitler came to power through a democratic process. It's vital to understand if we have any hope of understanding the present dark moment.

Farming while black. "The truth, however, makes no one happy: 1.) Conservatives refuse to acknowledge racism, 2.) Liberals refuse to confront racism unless it carries a flag, 3.) As a result, what success I’ve had in life is owed mostly to an ability to make White people very, very comfortable."

The I in We. WeWork - or rather, the We Company - is going to catastrophically implode. Here's why.

The World of Online Dating for Socialists. It's too easy to make a joke about praxis here. But I found this fascinating. "Red Yenta isn’t the first socialist dating site to crop up on ye olde internet (a similar platform called OkComrade had a glorious, but brief run in 2014 before becoming defunct), but it is, as far as I can tell, the only one whose interface doesn’t look like a Trojan virus-encrusted Geocities page."

The IMF Confirms That 'Trickle-Down' Economics Is, Indeed, a Joke. I didn't know that, like meritocracy, trickle-down economics was literally coined as a joke. That it doesn't work is obvious, but why do conservatives spin satire into reality so easily? Don't answer that.

Alphabet-Owned Jigsaw Bought a Russian Troll Campaign as an Experiment. I actually thought about doing the same. They're cheap as hell; we have to assume that just about everyone is doing it. (Not just the Russians, and not just using troll farms in Russia. Social media is fully gamed.)

Right-wing publications launder an anti-journalist smear campaign. Quillette, which itself launders hateful rhetoric and makes it look like reasonable discussion (albeit for people who aren't willing to engage in critical thought), published work by a right-wing troll that formed the basis of a kill list of left-wing journalists.

To protect and slur. "Inside hate groups on Facebook, police officers trade racist memes, conspiracy theories and Islamophobia." No surprise, but excellent work by Reveal.

The Time I Went On A Lesbian Cruise And It Blew Up My Entire Life. This is a controversial piece because of the transphobia present on the cruise, and to some extent the lack of criticism of it in the piece itself. So read it through that lens - but I found it a fascinating window into a world I'll never get to see.

The Best Way To Save People From Suicide. Bad headline. But I've known too many people who have died through suicide. I want to be able to better help.

Bodies in Seats. Important reading for anyone in the tech industry - and anyone who spends a lot of time using its products. This is a terrifying portrait of life in a Facebook moderation site. From what I know of other big sites, life isn't much better there, either. So I consider this to be a systemic problem. The tech industry is very good at creating a shiny face that makes us think everything works by magic. Typically, it works through low-paid workers in bad conditions - and a lot of them.

What It’s Actually Like to Be on House Hunters—Twice. My guilty pleasure is all fake. I mean, I kind of assumed.

What Really Happened to Malaysia’s Missing Airplane. Ultimately, a very sad, very human story.

‘Never again’ means nothing if Holocaust analogies are always off limits. How clearly can we say this? We have concentration camps at the southern border. And the analogies are strong. No, they're not death camps. But that doesn't mean we can't draw parallels.

Balancing the Ledger on Juneteenth. "In 2019, Juneteenth will be celebrated as emancipation was in the old days: with calls for reparations." As it should. I support reparations.

Why Should We Care About Faux Free-Speech Warriors? Because the Koch Brothers Are Paying Their Bills. Peterson, Shapiro, giant swathes of the Intellectual Dark Web? Koch funded, as it turns out. The idea is to counteract left-wing thought in universities - systematically, as a concerted effort.

Hideous Men. A remarkably written account, not just of an assault at the hands of Donald Trump, but of a series of abusers. Frightening, not just because of the brutality of these people, but because these people are everywhere, and it's impossible to draw a line. All of us men can do better - even if we think we don't participate, we need to do far better at calling it out and dismantling the systems that allow this to happen.

Hackers are stealing years of call records from hacked cell networks. "At least 10 cell networks have been hacked over the past seven years." And at the same time, the Trump administration is considering a ban on end-to-end encryption.

Previously

Here's what I read in May, April, March, February, and January.

Books

The Spirit of Science Fiction, by Roberto Bolaño, translated by Natasha Wimmer. A lyrical stream of a book, conjuring adolescence in all its cusping possibilities and emerging sexuality. Slight but evocative, often blurring the line between prose and poetry.

Air Vol. 1: Letters From Lost Countries, by G Willow Wilson and MK Perker. My first graphic novel this year (I've been wanting to read something by G Willow Wilson for a while). It starts with a human mystery but quickly unfurls into an existential adventure that upends reality itself. Upon finishing, I immediately ordered the other volumes.

Team Human, by Douglas Rushkoff. I'm a huge fan of Doug; I once had the privilege of speaking to his class, and Known was mentioned in his book Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus. This is a manifesto for reclaiming civilization and embracing our humanity; a compelling vision rooted in empathy and compassion. A point of light and hope for the future. Emergent Strategy is a good companion read.

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, by Matthew Desmond. I will be thinking about this book for the rest of my life. A vivid portrait of the horrors many Americans are forced to live through every day, and the people who profit from it. A national tragedy, made real through masterful narrative.

Bluets, by Maggie Nelson. A meditation on loss and longing that builds like a painting, its yearning expressed through discussions of color and light. Beautifully written; heartbreakingly felt.

The Trouble With Reality: A Rumination on Moral Panic in Our Time, by Brooke Gladstone. Facts are not the same as truth; the latter has power, and can be fabricated by totalitarian leaders and gaslighters with a blanket of lies. A meditation on the Rashomon of modern life.

Notable Articles

Want to see what one digital future for newspapers looks like? Look at The Guardian, which isn’t losing money anymore. The Guardian's experiment with patronage has been a roaring success, and points to the fact that many people who subscribe to newspapers do so because they want the journalism to exist in the world, not because of any sense of exclusivity.

Silicon Valley is awash in Chinese and Saudi cash — and no one is paying attention (except Trump). A quiet secret about Venture Capital firms is that they often take money from regimes that have dubious human rights records. A question I have: when much of a VC fund is linked to a government, and the fund has a voting seat on the board of a company, and that company (for example) operates a giant surveillance apparatus, how independently can we trust the fund to make decisions?

'Wide-open potential for abuse': States are ground zero in the fight against child marriage. 17 states have no minimum age of marriage. That it isn't a political slam dunk to end child marriage is yet another thing that blows my mind about America.

AirPods Are a Tragedy. I depend on mine, but this exploration of the environmental impact has made me rethink (again) my technology purchases. If we really believe in making positive environmental steps, we've got to make better decisions. I'll stop buying AirPods, but I wish there was a clearer, more positive alternative for phones, laptops, etc.

'I see any dinosaur, I buy it': at home with the embattled owner of the Flintstone house. I see this house all the time from the 280. Visiting it is on my bucket list. The current owner kind of seems like a badass.

Three Feet From God: An Oral History of Nirvana ‘Unplugged’. This was one of the most influential albums on me as a teenager. It's a beautiful set, recorded live six months before Kurt Cobain's untimely death. The performance of Lead Belly's Where Did You Sleep Last Night is particularly affecting. It's neat to read the behind the scenes story.

What Happened After My 13-Year-Old Son Joined the Alt-Right. A portrait of the male resentment and coercive outside factors that these hateful movements thrive on. It's like a cult. But the piece offers a glimmer of hope at the end.

The Problem With Supplements. There should certainly be stronger oversight over the supplement industry, and there are major potential ill effects. The argument isn't that all supplements are bad - it's that they're not necessarily good, either, and many are harmful, particularly without a doctor's supervision. Adelle Davis has a lot to answer for.

Is Conference Room Air Making You Dumber? The argument being made here is much more far-reaching than conference rooms. Indoor air quality is not regulated or monitored to anywhere near the same degree as outdoor air, but it may have a stronger effect on our health.

It's Time to Break Up Facebook. Chris Hughes, an estranged Facebook co-founder, repeats many of the arguments made in Tim Wu's The Curse of Bigness. I'm very happy to see these arguments being made in a more public way, both by Hughes and politicians like Elizabeth Warren. I strongly agree that reformed anti-trust legislation will have an outsized positive impact on both the technology industry and inequality overall.

Strong Opinions Loosely Held Might be the Worst Idea in Tech. It's an approach that often leads to bluster and doesn't work well with introverts. Let's all just be more comfortable with saying "I don't know; let's find out".

The tyranny of ideas. Once a creator becomes known for an idea, how can they move beyond it?

Why I (Still) Love Tech: In Defense of a Difficult Industry. I'm holding onto my love by the finest of fine threads. I'd love to share Paul Ford's enthusiasm, and maybe I kind of do, but my love of tech was never about the computers themselves or transhumanism, and was always about the potential to connect people. For me as a teenager, and thereafter, the potential to be really seen. It's hard to be enthusiastic about that knowing what we know now about power, abuse and inequality. Still, the whisper of a hint of that old potential is still there. Maybe we can turn this ship around.

The Racist Origins of America’s Tech Industry. It's all to do with counting and tracking people - from the US census, through IBM's involvement in the Holocaust. Just as Nazi propaganda techniques paved the way for modern marketing, racist tracking techniques made the way for modern surveillance.

The Criminalization of Women’s Bodies Is All About Conservative Male Power. "The goal of the wave of anti-abortion laws in America is to put female sexuality under strict and brutal state control." More than sexuality, it's about enforcing patriarchy. "We live in a society that is comfortable letting men get away with sexual violence, but determined not to let women get away with consensual sex. This is why there are vast swathes of society who are comfortable giving vast executive and judicial power to men credibly accused of sexual assault—as long as those same men promise to confiscate women’s power to sexually self-determine."

Why America Can’t Solve Homelessness. "The evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that punishing homeless people makes it harder for them to find housing and get work. Nonetheless, the most common demands from urban voters are for politicians to increase arrests, close down soup kitchens and impose entry requirements and drug tests in shelters." Why can't we be more compassionate? Better informed? As I learned by reading Evicted this month, it's because poverty is hugely profitable.

What Actually Happens When a Country Bans Abortion. "Romania’s prohibition of the procedure was disproportionately felt by low-income women and disadvantaged groups, which abortion-rights advocates in the United States fear would happen if the Alabama law came into force. As a last resort, many Romanian women turned to home and back-alley abortions, and by 1989, an estimated 10,000 women had died as a result of unsafe procedures. The real number of deaths might have been much higher, as women who sought abortions and those who helped them faced years of imprisonment if caught. Maternal mortality skyrocketed, doubling between 1965 and 1989."

Why Losing Our Newspapers Is Breaking Our Politics. "As local newspapers disappear, citizens increasingly rely on national sources of political information, which emphasizes competition and conflict between the parties. Local newspapers, by contrast, serve as a central source of shared information, setting a common agenda. Readers of local newspapers feel more attached to their communities. Unless something is done, our politics will likely become ever more contentious and partisan as the media landscape consolidates and nationalizes."

Inside the World of Racist Science Fiction. This is fascinating to me: for me, science fiction is all about extrapolating what humanity can be, both for good and ill. I guess that's true of racists, too, and they have a parallel set of literature where dystopias are characterised by unity and racial diversity. It doesn't sound great, and I have no desire to read any of it. It's worth noting, though, that some mainstream science fiction authors also harbored unpleasant views: Robert Heinlein, for example, became increasingly right-wing as he got older.

The 15 Year Layover. Merhan Nasseri is the real-life counterpart to, and inspiration for, Tom Hanks's character in The Terminal. Trapped in Charles de Gaulle airport, partially by beaucracy and partially by his desire to control his identity, he has managed to survive through a mixture of intelligence and the kindness of others. But it's also an inadvertent commentary on the ridiculousness of borders as they stand. Why should he be trapped this way? Why should arbitrary rules mean someone should spend over a decade sleeping on benches in a shopping mall? It makes no sense.

How Many Bones Would You Break to Get Laid? I'll admit I'm fascinated by incels. Their worldview is based on an unacknowledged misogyny; what they think is a bedrock of scientific understanding is actually just illogical sexism dressed up as reason. I don't sympathize with them in the slightest, but I think they probably need help. Particularly in the cases described here, where their disorder brings them to the point of getting plastic surgery to try and become more attractive. Perhaps if they tried to be empathetic, three dimensional people?

For the record: Jonathan Freedland on his sister’s farewell Desert Island Discs. A journalist's gift to his dying sister, and the role the resulting self-recorded radio show played in her goodbye.

W3C TAG Ethical Web Principles. For the first time, real humanist ethics are represented in the W3C platform. This is a huge step forward - I agree with everything here, even if I wish it went just a little bit further.

Previously

Here's what I read in April, March, February, and January.

“Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful. I only aim at the powerful. When satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not only cruel — it’s vulgar.” - Molly Ivins

Comedians debate about punching up vs punching down - the idea that making fun of people more powerful than you is more equitous than making fun of people with less power and agency. Some argue that this rule is unnecessarily restrictive, but they're often the same people who complain that people can't be racist or sexist anymore.

Anyway, I'm not a comedian, and I've taken the idea to heart.

In technology, we often talk about disruption. In the Clay Christiansen sense that most people refer to it, disruptive innovation "describes a process by which a product or service takes root initially in simple applications at the bottom of a market and then relentlessly moves up market, eventually displacing established competitors."

Internet companies have disrupted incumbents again and again. The question is: who is worth disrupting?

I think "always punch up" has a place here, too. When you're building a new platform, your targets should be the slow, inefficient mega-corporations further up the food chain. By punching up here, you're probably removing gatekeepers and democratizing a part of the market that had been previously locked up by one or two established players. Conversely, if your technology disrupts, say, public transport or the social welfare system, you're punching down: your platform negatively affects people with less power than you. Rather than democratizing, you're locking up an important resource that was previously owned by the people.

It's a simple test that you can rinse and repeat. Disrupting small, independent bookstores? Punching down. Disrupting WalMart? Punching up. Food co-operatives? Down. Monsanto? Up.

Of course, it's all relative to your own power and agency, which changes over time depending on how successful you are. White, male Stanford graduates from wealthy families have a different power equation than people of color who have had to overcome generational inequalities, for example. Someone emerging from poverty by creating an alternative to the neighborhood bookstore is punching up, but if Amazon did the exact same thing, they'd be punching down.

One could argue that it's an unnecessarily combatative metaphor, and it probably is. Life and business should be much more about collaboration than "punching" in any direction. In my defense, I've co-opted the idea rather than inventing it. Nonetheless, I find it a useful yardstick for which opportunities to take, which ideas are worth pursuing, and which ventures are likely to run into ethical trouble in the future.

Books

Parable of the Sower, by Octavia E Butler. It's tempting to try and read Butler's entire bibliography this year. Her work is amazing. In turns profoundly affecting and utterly terrifying, this novel feels like a glimpse of the near future rather than far-flung speculation. Visceral and poignant. I can’t wait to read the sequel.

Journey to Armenia by Osip Mandelstam, translated into English by Sidney Monas (my grandfather). A beautiful portrait of a specific time and place; the writing is breathtaking, even if the observations are firmly set in an imperialist era. I lost my grandfather last month, and I could hear his voice in the writing, too.

The Curse of Bigness, by Tim Wu. I should have read this months ago; it was recommended to me last year as part of a project I wish life hadn't gotten in the way of. A concise and powerful argument for antitrust reform as a path to a more equitable democracy. It cemented my opinion that it’s one of the most important things we can do.

Notable Articles

The Attention Economy to the Addiction Economy. "Short term optimization and focusing on attention will hurt the internet over the long term." I couldn't agree more, and I'm glad Mozilla is fighting the good fight.

The Day the Dinosaurs Died. "“We have the whole KT event preserved in these sediments,” DePalma said. “With this deposit, we can chart what happened the day the Cretaceous died.”" Absolutely amazing.

“The Big Error Was That She Was Caught”: The Untold Story Behind the Mysterious Disappearance of Fan Bingbing, the World’s Biggest Movie Star. A fascinating account of a story I've been peripherally aware of.

Bussed out: How America moves its homeless. "Each year, US cities give thousands of homeless people one-way bus tickets out of town. An 18-month nationwide investigation by the Guardian reveals, for the first time, what really happens at journey’s end." This should be a national tragedy. Beautifully reported, and best read on desktop.

The Hidden Air Pollution in Our Homes. Outside air pollution is regulated; indoor air quality is not. But the particles in our homes can have a severe impact on our hearts and lungs. I've become more and more aware of lung health in particular.

How Rupert Murdoch’s Empire of Influence Remade the World. An impressively-told account of the Murdoch empire, the impact it's undeniably had, and its future.

Facebook Wants a Faux Regulator for Internet Speech. It Won’t Happen. The kicker is in the final paragraph. "In the future, American speech — at least online — may be governed by Europe." I agree. GDPR has already forced a rearchitecture of popular services all over the world, despite only having European jurisdiction. And that's a great thing for everybody.

Privileged. Utah Jazz basketball player on white privilege and his racial awakening. The conclusions he comes to should be conclusions for a lot of us.

We Need a More Ethical Web. I trust Daniel Applequist's opinions on many things, and he's right on here. "It’s time for web platform makers to enlarge this ethical framework to include human rights, dignity and personal agency. We need to put human rights at the core of the web platform. And we need to promote ethical thinking across the web industry to reinforce this approach." Damn straight.

The Death of the Hippies. Joe Samberg - Andy's dad - photographed the decline of the hippie scene on Berkeley's Telegraph Ave, just a few miles away from where I write this now. Drugs were a way to discredit both the anti-war movement and the black power movement, a deliberate and cynical government strategy, and unfortunately, they worked.

How PragerU Is Winning The Right-Wing Culture War Without Donald Trump. "It took two months for Prager University, one of the biggest, most influential and yet least understood forces in online media, to mold a conservative." I've come across PragerU's videos, often reshared by conservative family members on Facebook. They're easily debunked, but I'm not a receptive audience. There's no equivalent on the left.

Bret Easton Ellis Thinks You’re Overreacting to Donald Trump. I'm not shocked that he's as vapid and superficial as his work.

Climate Chaos Is Coming — and the Pinkertons Are Ready. If you're not familiar with the Pinkertons, they were Abraham Lincoln's private security during the Civil War, and were later hired to infiltrate unions and break up labor protests. They expect business to boom during the climate crisis.

15 Months of Fresh Hell Inside Facebook. As always, an excellent example of a company that could benefit from antitrust reform.

Capitalism in crisis: U.S. billionaires worry about the survival of the system that made them rich. "“So, what should we do?” her colleague asked. “Is he saying we shouldn’t go into banking or consulting?”"

‘Liz Was a Diehard Conservative’. It's early days, but Elizabeth Warren is my preferred choice for Democratic nominee (and the only candidate I'm donating to regularly, although I've also given to Bernie Sanders). This profile only deepens my respect.

The Black Feminists Who Saw the Alt-Right Threat Coming. An underreported story about a group of black women who discovered a disinformation campaign that was arguably the precursor of both GamerGate and the tactics used in the 2016 election.

I Used to Work for Google. I Am a Conscientious Objector. "Direct action from tech workers has been undeniably effective. Human rights organizations must therefore continue to advocate the legal protection of whistle-blowers and conscientious objectors, including protecting the organizing required for an effective collective action. Further, the broader civil society could increase the frequency of whistle-blowing by creating a dedicated legal defense fund."

Why Won’t Twitter Treat White Supremacy Like ISIS? Because It Would Mean Banning Some Republican Politicians Too. This is a telling story on so many levels: one reason Twitter can't ban white supremacists is that the dragnet would also ban prominent Republicans.

Here’s what happened inside The Markup. An evolving account of what happened to a publication that should have shined a data-driven investigative journalism spotlight on the societal impact of the tech industry.

The Narrative Experiment That Is the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I still haven't seen Endgame, but I unashamedly love these movies. It's never been done before: 22 movies all building on the same story. Even James Bond (which I like a lot less because of its jingoism and sexism, but technically has more titles, at 26) hasn't attempted this kind of interwoven narrative.

Jack Dorsey’s TED Interview and the End of an Era. "The struggle to maintain Twitter is a double referendum: first, on the sustainability of scale; second, on the pervasive belief in Silicon Valley that technology can be neutral and should be treated as such. This idea, that systems will find their own equilibrium, echoes the libertarian spirit that has long animated the Valley and fails to account for actual power imbalances that exist in the real world. In 2019, it also suggests a certain lack of vision or imagination about what social technologies can, or should, be."

Tony Slattery: ‘I had a very happy time until I went slightly barmy’. I used to love Whose Line Is It Anyway, and Slattery was omnipresent there and across the pantheon of British comedy panel shows. Even as a teenager, I could tell he was drunk. This is a sad story, but also one of survival.

The largest study involving transgender people is providing long-sought insights about their health. "The research could also reveal some of the basic biology underlying differences among sexes. Tantalizing hints are already beginning to emerge about the respective roles of hormones and genetics in gender identity. And findings are beginning to clarify the medical and psychological impacts of transitioning."

A Terrorist Tried to Kill Me Because I Am a Jew. I Will Never Back Down. "I pray that my missing finger serves as a constant reminder to me. A reminder that every single human being is created in the image of God; a reminder that I am part of a people that has survived the worst destruction and will always endure; a reminder that my ancestors gave their lives so that I can live in freedom in America; and a reminder, most of all, to never, ever, not ever be afraid to be Jewish."

The Case for Doing Nothing. "More practically, the idea of niksen is to take conscious, considered time and energy to do activities like gazing out of a window or sitting motionless. The less-enlightened might call such activities “lazy” or “wasteful.” Again: nonsense." I'm very pro-niksen.

Previously

Here's what I read in March, February, and January.

I woke up this morning to news that the President's advisers met to discuss heightened military involvement at the border, including tent cities for migrants that would be run by the military itself.

These are concentration camps by definition: a place where large numbers of people (such as prisoners of war, political prisoners, refugees, or the members of an ethnic or religious minority) are detained or confined under armed guard.

My dad spent some of the first years of his life in such a camp with his family. But even if you don't have direct experience with these atrocities - even if you don't viscerally remember your grandmother's wailing from the nightmares she suffered from every night - intellectually you've got to know that this is something that can't stand. And while it feels like it's one more thing on top of a long list of things that won't stand, it's also a leveling up of the threat. They want us to feel fatigue. They want us to feel like all of this is normal now. And we can't feel that way.

But what can we do?

I mean, we can vote, of course. We can take to the streets. And we should do those things.

In fact, if we do build and run concentration camps, we should bring the country to a standstill.

In my working life, I've operated and advised startups and other businesses. One of the core pieces of advice that it's important for any business owner to internalize is to have a bias towards action. It's potentially possible to talk and research and theorize forever, but that is death. What you have to do more than anything is get out there and execute on your vision, set yourself to learn continuously from how people interact with you, and constantly change based on that feedback, even if the information you receive is imperfect.

At its worst, Twitter can be an outrage trap. It is a useful source of information, and a good way to find like-minded people. But the outrage that is poured into social media is effectively thrown into a void. Servers have a location called /dev/null; redirect the output of a program to that location and you'll never hear from it again. Social media, when not paired with action, is /dev/null.

But we know when it is paired with action - for the women's march, for Black Lives Matter, for protests against illegal surveillance, for the school walkouts, for SOPA and PIPA - it can be effective. All of those movements transcended activist communities and became more or less mainstream. Say you want about the pussy hats, they're a part of the mainstream national consciousness now. That's an incredibly impressive feat for a protest movement.

If the US builds concentration camps at the border, every one of us should strike. Whether we lock human beings up in camps should not be a partisan issue. Everyone with an ounce of dignity, or an ounce of historical understanding, should walk out of work. Every website should be blanked out. Every store should be shut. Every American should be resolute until those camps are closed. And we need to let our government know that this is how we will act if they are opened.

I don't think we quite have the platforms to support this kind of organization. And I'm sure that we'll somehow see camps spun to be a positive thing by the government and its sympathetic media, as has happened every single time they have been used in the past. But that this is even on the table should be a national shame, regardless of political affiliation. And if this is a country that genuinely believes in freedom and liberty - an idea that unfortunately seems ludicrous given our current political situation and climate - we need to use our constitutionally guaranteed rights to show those in power how we feel.

I've been building open source platforms for my entire career. It has not made me rich. Nonetheless, I'm more committed than ever to openness as an ideology, strategy, and organized response.

It took me years to realize that the startups I founded were more acts of resistance than they were ways to make money from a perceived opportunity. Elgg, my first, was entirely created because my co-founder and I believed that educational technology exploited institutions that served the public good; we open sourced it because we were appalled by the license fees these business commanded of taxpayer-funded organizations. It wasn't so much "we could make millions of dollars" as "you're looking at the million you never made".

The same pattern has continued since. Known was originally created as a way to support communities outside of the centrally-controlled Facebook ecosystem. I found work at Latakoo and Matter, two organizations anchored (albeit in different ways) in supporting the future of media in an uncertain time. And Unlock is a payments layer for the web without central control.

I'm here to tell you that running an open source project is not a path to glory. One of the important lessons we taught startups at Matter is that first-mover advantage is a myth: it's usually the second or third mover in a market that learns from the first mover in order to find success. In open source, that's particularly true, because the second and third movers can literally take your software and commercialize it. You spend money on R&D, and they can immediately turn around and use it for free.

Crypto-based projects like Unlock have a way of getting around this: the second and third movers theoretically increase the value of tokens held by the first mover, so everybody wins. There's also a growing movement to compensate the developers of open source libraries that are used as the building blocks of for-profit products and services. Still, in general, open source is not for the profit-minded.

But not everything needs to turn a profit; there is a core and growing need for software that is entirely built for the public good. Particularly now.

I'm comfortable with the idea of end-user open source platforms sitting in opposition to monopolies. In education, government, and anywhere primarily supported by public funding, it makes sense to use software that doesn't lock you in or quietly convert public funds into private equity. And as software becomes more and more ingrained into every aspect of society, we need to be asking questions about the effects of lock-in and ecosystem ownership.

I'm beginning to think of open source as operating like a union. In labor unions, corporate power is offset by organizing workers into a counterbalancing force. One worker would have a hard time counterbalancing a corporation's power, but if all the workers band together, they can influence decision-making and negotiate for better working conditions. Similarly, in the open source movement, developers all act together to build products that counterbalance the impact of high-growth platforms in order to create a better ecosystem.

(I'm pretty sure Eric Raymond, who originally coined "open source" because he felt the free software movement was associated with communism, would hate this framing. Too bad.)

I knew Elgg was going to be a success when non-profits in Colombia started to use it to share resources with each other. If it had been a centralized, subscription-only platform, and if all the available social software had been centralized, subcription-only platforms, they never would have been able to do this. But because there was an open source platform available, they could take it, run it on their own servers, and customize it for their own needs, including translating it into Spanish. In turn, other Spanish-language users could take their work and use it for their own advantage.

And, yes, some people who weren't me made a lot of money from Elgg. But for me, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. It was used to train aid workers by NGOs around the world, and by schools who otherwise didn't have the funds to run a platform of their own. That's meaningful. No, it wasn't a VC-scale business, and it didn't achieve significant recurring revenue. But that's not in any way to say that it didn't have value.

Not everything that has value has to be a high-growth business - and not being suitable for VC funding is not a value judgment. We're in an era where the impact of venture capital scale is being examined, and it's the best time in decades to find other models. If you're building something to serve people, it's important to think about how you can do so sustainably, but there are lots of different ways to do this. From the Zebra movement to the Shuttleworth Foundation, there are opportunities to find sustainability in a way that's right for the thing you're trying to create, with world-positive values.

Communities can build open source; startups can absolutely build open source; I think there's a huge part for public media and higher educational institutions to play that they as yet haven't quite lived up to. For organizations that already serve the public good, collaborating on software that serves their needs should be a no-brainer.

More than anything, I think there's value in standing in opposition to the status quo. Open source is a bottom-up, worker-led movement. The means and outputs of production are available to everybody. I think that's beautiful - and, in a world where every aspect of our lives has been packaged and monopolized for profit, a powerful force for good.

It was brought to my attention that the illustration I used for this piece was an image that traditionally is used as a symbol for racial equality. My misappropriation was unintentional, but nonetheless harmful. I'm very sorry for this thoughtless mistake.

Books

Contrary to my goal of reading at least book a week this year, I didn't manage to finish a single book in March. It was one of the worst months of my life, and my thoughts were scattered and urgent; finding the mental space to immerse myself in someone else's work was difficult. Prolonged concentration at all, in fact, was hard to come by.

I've forgiven myself for this, and for probably failing to reach my goal for the year. At the same time, markedly increasing my book reading - and mostly avoiding business or tech books - has improved my life this year in many ways, and I'm getting back into it. I might well still hit 52 by the end of the year, although this was always an arbitrary goal that doesn't really matter. What matters is the books themselves, and the time spent reading them.

Notable Articles

Trapped in a hoax: survivors of conspiracy theories speak out. "In short, Fontaine is a vulnerable leftwing individual who would not harm a flea, which apparently makes them perfect fodder for the sadistic mockery of 4chan, the anonymous message board that hosts alt-right activists and other extremists." Truly tragic stories of exploitation by trolls and worse.

How Wealth Reduces Compassion. "Who is more likely to lie, cheat, and steal—the poor person or the rich one? It’s temping to think that the wealthier you are, the more likely you are to act fairly. After all, if you already have enough for yourself, it’s easier to think about what others may need. But research suggests the opposite is true: as people climb the social ladder, their compassionate feelings towards other people decline."

The Making of the Fox News White House. "Fox News has always been partisan. But has it become propaganda?" (Spoiler alert: absolutely yes.)

WWF Funds Guards Who Have Tortured And Killed People. "The World Wide Fund for Nature funds vicious paramilitary forces to fight poaching. A BuzzFeed News investigation reveals the hidden human cost." Challenging: conservation is one of the most important movements for good.

Is Japan losing its umami? I very badly want to try this soy sauce.

The Case for Reparations. aka the most surprising David Brooks column ever. I agree with him: there is a strong and enduring case for real reparations.

Here’s how we can break up Big Tech. Elizabeth Warren has long been one of my favorite American politicians. I agree with her - strongly - about breaking up big tech (more on this, hopefully, soon). This is a concrete proposal that I'd be happy to co-sign. It would have a positive impact not just on the tech industry, but on all of American society.

You May Have Forgotten Foursquare, but It Didn’t Forget You. A sobering account of how tracking and surveillance have become a core part of our tech ecosystem, including as a part of apps and services that you might not expect. You don't need to have Foursquare installed to be adding to its dataset.

Facial recognition's 'dirty little secret': Millions of online photos scraped without consent. "The latest company to enter this territory was IBM, which in January released a collection of nearly a million photos that were taken from the photo hosting site Flickr and coded to describe the subjects’ appearance. IBM promoted the collection to researchers as a progressive step toward reducing bias in facial recognition."

The US Government Will Be Scanning Your Face At 20 Top Airports, Documents Show. When we talk about a "virtual wall", it's important to consider what this actually means.

The Government Is Using the Most Vulnerable People to Test Facial Recognition Software. "Our research, which will be reviewed for publication this summer, indicates that the U.S. government, researchers, and corporations have used images of immigrants, abused children, and dead people to test their facial recognition systems, all without consent."

Former Facebook Employees Say The Company’s Recent Prioritization Of Privacy Is All About Optics. I'm shocked; shocked, I tell you.

Facebook acknowledges concerns over Cambridge Analytica emerged earlier than reported. "The new information “could suggest that Facebook has consistently mislead [sic]” British lawmakers “about what it knew and when about Cambridge Analytica”, tweeted Damian Collins, the chair of the House of Commons digital culture media and sport select committee (DCMS) in response to the court filing."

Why You Procrastinate (It Has Nothing to Do With Self-Control). It's about a failure to regulate emotions, which points to its relationship to anxiety, depression, and self-care. And therefore, a way to go about finding more focus: find more happiness.

The Adult Brain Does Grow New Neurons After All, Study Says. "Study points toward lifelong neuron formation in the human brain’s hippocampus, with implications for memory and disease."

What Facebook Is Getting Wrong in the Fight Against Fake News. A punch-the-air interview with Brooke Binkowski, formerly Managing Editor at Snopes. "If Facebook was really acting in good faith, they’d put it into a foundation and not use it to make the marionettes dance, which they do."

The 310 Miles Breaking Brexit. A beautiful exploration of the border between Ireland and the UK, its importance today, and its history. "The 310 mile (500 kilometer) line that cuts through rivers, lakes, farms, roads and villages separates two countries with different currencies, heads of state and political systems. It also marks a division that has weighed on British and Irish history for a century, a reminder of terrorist gun-running, illicit alcohol, military checkpoints and bombs."

Previously

Here's what I read in January and February.

I don't know how to even begin to address this, or if I should, but here goes. This update comes with a trigger warning for self-harm, serious illness, and hate. But also maybe some hope.

My mother is sick. Really sick. She's waiting for another lung operation (she had a double lung transplant six years ago), and last week I learned that a virus is putting that in jeopardy. Her lung capacity is declining and I don't know what's going to happen. I've developed my own cough, which is just a cold of some kind, but because she's immunosuppressed I can't be with her. I've been recording her life story for posterity, and to show to her future grandchildren that she may never meet. I don't understand what the universe looks like without her, and I can't imagine that any offspring of mine wouldn't have the benefit of her love. It seems so incredibly cruel.

Later last week I learned that a close friend took her own life. The news doesn't appear to be public, so I won't share further details, but I'm very sad that she's gone. I'm also sad that I didn't do more to help; I wasn't always there when she reached out and wanted to talk. Unfortunately, I've known many people who have decided to end their lives, and this has been true for all of them. I was busy, and I always wished I could have spent more time with them.

Finally, when I was flying back from a short trip, I learned that a former co-worker, Tess Rothstein, was killed while cycling in SoMa. We weren't friends, but she was an enormously positive presence. And it just seems so wanton; so meaningless. She had so much to offer.

And then, today.

I can't imagine what the families and friends of the people at the two mosques in New Zealand feel like today. There are no words. I just wish them peace and love. It has been hard to think about anything else.

There's a lot to be said about the media-aware way in which it was done, and there's a complicated discussion to be had about the complicity of technology platforms. This is not that piece. Today, all I have to offer is solidarity.

And indeed, if we can't offer solidarity, what is the point in us? What is the point in having a society if we can't be there for each other?

In the aftermath of the atrocity, members of Canadian right-wing communities discussed being "colonized by people they can't relate to". Ignoring the obvious historical irony, and the intentional misuse of the word "colonized", imagine being this scared of people who are different to yourself. It's not human nature; the vast majority of people are inclusive and compassionate. It's petty small-mindedness if it's anything, with a core of terrified racism that I almost pity. It's the same sentiment that had protesters in Charlottesville chanting "the Jews will not replace us". In many ways, it's the same sentiment that has led to Brexit, and Trump, and all the tiny aggressions towards anyone who is not a part of the straight, white, male mainstream.

Last year, I needed to get a DNA test to determine whether I was likely to die of the same incurable illness my mother has. The experience - and the experience of supporting her through this suffering - was clarifying on multiple levels. I've carried grief with me for years, and it is likely to be a part of me forever (as I suspect it is for most people). But grief can be acknowledged; it can guide.

I find joy in people. Life is precious and special, and we should celebrate the time we have, and the time we have with every person in our lives. I heave learned so much from the generosity of people, and I can honestly say that my friends and family make life worth living.

And I find joy in purpose. I want to make the world more peaceful, more inclusive, more empathetic, more kind. I am not arrogant enough to think I can change the world in a big way - but maybe I can nudge it, even if it's only in a small way. There is no purpose in glorifying yourself, or serving your own self-interest alone. I find that to be a morally bankrupt and emotionally hollow ideology (and I have to imagine that its proponents are incredibly lonely). If we can't stand in solidarity with humans, and work to improve every person's life, what are we for? Why are we even here?

I'm not religious; I don't believe in nationalism or patriotism. I'm a person, here to stand in partnership with every other person, regardless of belief or origin. We're all interconnected; we're all interdependent. Even if one were to be a fundamentally selfish person, that connectedness would suggest that helping others, and lifting everybody's quality of life, would be the correct thing to do. It's in all of our interests to work towards peace, inclusion, equality, and kindness. Yet that's not where we're at as a species.

These small, scared people will not win. The sadness will not win.

Being generous, having purpose, working in service of others; the truth is that all of those things make you happier, too. I need to get so much better at this. But it's clear to me that it's the right direction.

Rather than be responsive to hate, fear, or tragedy, I want to be proactive with love, with everything in my work, and everything in my life.

Onwards.

Books

Kindred, by Octavia E Butler. A lightning bolt of a book; a grim fantasy with a vital, beating heart at its center, that cuts to the core of all of our history. At once horrifying and required reading. I'm looking forward to reading more of her work.

Becoming, by Michelle Obama. Remarkable for its openness, although it occasionally paints a glossed-over picture of Obama’s Presidency. The contrast between her integrity, empathy and inclusion and the cruelty of the Trumps brought me to tears.

Little Wonder, by Kat Gardiner. A fictionalized, lyrical account of opening and then closing a music venue and cafe in the Pacific Northwest. Almost a poem to failure; bittersweet, evocative writing, rich with human detail.

Emergent Strategy, by adrienne maree brown. A playbook and an attitudebook for people who want to help shape the future. Fiction, poetry and emotional connectedness are deftly drawn on to help us form better organizations and better selves. I've returned to it and quoted from it a few times even in the few weeks since finishing it.

Binti, by Nnedi Okorafor. Effortlessly inventive and cleverly humanist, a masterful science fiction novella about belonging and understanding that I expect to reread. I can’t wait to read the other two in the series.

Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen, by Jose Antonio Vargas. His state of unmoored helplessness at the hands of a decision he had no part in, and America’s cruel xenophobia, is profoundly sad. Mandatory, heartbreaking reading.

Notable Articles

How Gab Has Raised Millions Thanks to This Crowdfunding Company. How StartEngine has allowed the white supremacist social network to survive through crowdfunding.

Finding Lena, the Patron Saint of JPEGs. A fascinating story about Lena, whose Playboy photo problematically became central to the creation of the JPEG. Even when I was studying Computer Science, her photo was still being used.

How Daar-na takes a culturally sensitive approach to psychosis. "Immigrants have higher rates of psychosis. A Dutch care facility believes culture should be part of treatment."

This Is Your Brain Off Facebook. I rejoined Facebook this month. I'm not certain it was a good idea; I can feel the cognitive effects, and I'm not sure they outweigh the benefits of feeling like I'm connected to people I otherwise wouldn't hear from.

Why this 19-year-old BuzzFeed quizmaker will no longer work for free. The person in charge of writing quizzes at BuzzFeed was laid off - in part because volunteers wrote most of the successful ones. This particular user is done providing free labor.

Let Children Get Bored Again. "Boredom teaches us that life isn’t a parade of amusements. More important, it spawns creativity and self-sufficiency." None of us should over-schedule ourselves - but in particular, we shouldn't do it to children.

On Hertzfeldt's Rejected. In turn, on art's subjugation to commerce.

The New Rules of Being a Millennial. Indescribable, but hilarious.

Liberals and Conservatives React in Wildly Different Ways to Repulsive Pictures. "To a surprising degree, our political beliefs may derive from a specific aspect of our biological makeup: our propensity to feel physical revulsion."

Scorched Earth. On journalism: "Advertising in its current forms is burning out — perhaps even for the lucky ones who still have it. Paywalls will not work for more than a few — and their builders often do not account for the real motives of people who pay and who don’t. There is not enough philanthropy from the rich — or charity from the rest of us — to pay for what is needed. Government support — whether financial or regulatory — is a dangerous folly."

More border surveillance tech could be worse for human rights than a wall. I'm deeply worried about this.

Heavy Metal Confronts Its Nazi Problem. A fascinating portrait of a scene that's tolerated fascist bands for a long time, and is now coming to terms with its problem.

What I learnt on a men-only retreat. British repression plus masculine repression doesn't equal a recipe for tenderness and sensitivity, but this is a poignant exploration.

‘Sustained and ongoing’ disinformation assault targets Dem presidential candidates. My friend Brett Horvath, co-founder of Guardians.ai, worked on this reporting. We all need to be aware of it.

The Latest Diet Trend Is Not Dieting. "Intuitive eating, on the other hand, is a theory that posits the opposite: Calorie counting, carb avoiding, and waistline measuring are not only making people emotionally miserable, but contributing to many of the health problems previously attributed to simple overeating."

Green New Deal is feasible and affordable. Yes and: I believe it deserves our support.

The Trauma Floor. The secret lives of Facebook moderators in America.

The deadly truth about a world built for men – from stab vests to car crashes. Crash-test dummies based on the ‘average’ male are just one example of design that forgets about women – and puts lives at risk.

How Google, Microsoft, and Big Tech Are Automating the Climate Crisis. We all have a responsibility when it comes to climate change; business isn't all just business.

Poll: How does the public think journalism happens? 60% of people think journalists are paid by their sources!

Barbara Hammer’s Exit Interview. "The pioneering filmmaker talks about her career, her quest to die with dignity, and why being a lesbian is so much fun." Tender, sad, beautiful.

Everyone Around You is Grieving. Go Easy. "Everyone is grieving and worried and fearful, and yet none of them wear the signs, none of them have labels, and none of them come with written warnings reading, I’M STRUGGLING. GO EASY."

Limiting Your Digital Footprints in a Surveillance State. "In China, evading the watchful eyes of the government sometimes feels like an exercise in futility. The place is wired with about 200 million surveillance cameras, Beijing controls the telecom companies, and every internet company has to hand over data when the police want it. They also know where journalists live because we register our address with police. In Shanghai, the police regularly come to my apartment; once they demanded to come inside." Arguably information that isn't just useful in China.

Previously

Here's what I read in January.

Social media is stressing me out.

Last Thanksgiving, I decided that this was becoming an important enough issue in my life to go cold turkey. I spent the rest of 2018 away from the social networks. Instead, I wrote more on my blog, and read more long-form content. It was transformative: I immediately felt calmer, and I became more organized than I'd felt in years. Most importantly, I was able to be more present with my family. At a time when I have a lot of people around me are suffering through serious medical issues, putting the phone down and really spending time with them felt like the right thing. It was the right thing.

Nevertheless, social media has crept back into my life this year. In January, I returned to Twitter, but chose to only interact with it on the desktop. I'm flirting with returning to Facebook on the same terms, in recognition of the fact that it's where everyone else is sharing their personal updates, and being somewhere else creates an extra cognitive load for anyone who wants to stay in touch with me. Maybe I should be at peace with losing touch with people who only want to passively stay in touch via social media; I'm not quite emotionally there.

With every additional service, I can feel the stress rising.

In his book The Hacking of the American Mind, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics Robert Lustig discusses the chemical difference between pleasure and happiness. Maybe this is something that is self-evident to you; it wasn't to me, and I've often used the two words interchangably.

WGBH Innovation Hub summarized his take on the differences last year:

• Lustig says that pleasure is short-lived, selfish, and can be achieved with substances whereas happiness is the opposite. Most importantly though, Lustig believes that pleasure is based on dopamine and happiness is based on serotonin, two entirely different brain chemicals. 
• Lustig argues that constantly searching for pleasure actually leads to greater and greater unhappiness. People build up a tolerance for repeated dopamine hits. And since dopamine is released when we consume or engage in some not-so-great-for-us things like sugar, alcohol, drugs, and addictive behavior, that’s an issue. 
• Corporations have exploited our desire for dopamine, according to Lustig. Whether that’s adding sugar into our food, or making apps addictive, Lustig thinks that businesses are essentially “hacking our brains.”

Every like, retweet, comment and share provides a short-term dopamine hit. Each one makes us more resistant to dopamine, making it harder and harder to achieve the same levels of pleasure, but it also pushes our stress levels. Think of it like a bell curve: a little stimulation makes us alert and ready to go, and can push us into the sweet spot for high-performance mental activity. Too much, and we're stressed out and making bad decisions.

Because there is so much genuine stress in my environment - terminally ill family members, the responsibilities of work, the financial pressures of being in the most expensive city in the world, and so on - it takes a comparatively smaller push to take me out of the sweet spot and find myself at the stressful end of the curve.

I became most acutely aware of this when I took a trip to New York last month. I'm a nervous flyer, and I installed a mobile game called Eggs, Inc to distract myself on take-off and landing. It's a well-made, witty game, and I found myself playing it on the subway, in my AirBnb, and on the flight home. And by the time I'd flown back, and had spent a few days at home, I felt like shit. I became aware that I was stressed out, and feeling awful about myself when I had a text conversation with a former colleague that, honestly, could have gone a lot better.

I thought about the effect the game was having on me. I was addicted, for sure - and it was because it was packed full of little enhancements and ways to level up. Every single event in the game was a dopamine hit. I was like a mouse pressing a dopamine lever.

So, I deleted the app. Within a day, I was beginning to feel calmer. On every flight since, I've meditated during take-off and landing.

This is probably not everybody's experience. At least, I hope it isn't. My hope is that most people are not this susceptible to addiction, because they're not living with the same level of stress and unhappiness. Rather than working on reducing the levels of those things in my life, I was working on increasing my pleasure, and increasing my stress at the same time.

I don't believe that most developers intentionally ask how they can make their products more addictive. They do, however, run quantitative A/B tests, and qualitative user testing, in order to increase engagement. If a feature change to an app makes people use it for a few minutes longer a day, so much the better: the user is more likely to interact with advertising or invite someone else to join. Very few teams have been worrying that addiction is a negative behavior, although it's beginning to dawn on a few tech companies that this is a conversation they should be having.

The Center for Humane Technology is one organization that is doing work in this direction, by building a movement and running events to raise awareness about the cognitive impact of technology.

"This is a version of climate change," Jim Steyer, the CEO of Common Sense Media and brother of the billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer, said on stage. "Just like we’re watching the extraordinary changes in our physical environment, we’re watching extraordinary changes in our social, emotional, and cognitive environment."

It's a good first step, but there's a lot of work to do. It's also not a given that these efforts will be successful: almost by definition, consumer products that are more addictive will grow faster and be more valuable. Without some kind of outside intervention, that's a tough model to compete with.

Rather than being a version of climate change, this addiction has the potential to be this generation's version of smoking. The effect on your brain is measurable, and potentially irreversible:

In research published [in March 2018], psychologists and computer scientists have found an unusual and potentially troubling connection: the more tapping, clicking and social media posting and scrolling people do, the "noisier" their brain signals become. That finding took the researchers by surprise. Usually, when we do something more often, we get better, faster and more efficient at the task. 

Social media is an integral part of modern life. (Games aren't, and I don't plan on installing any more.) If we can't disconnect from it entirely without irreversibly wounding our connectedness to others, we can at least hope to manage it responsibly, and with an awareness of what it's doing to our brains.

I plan on being more intentional about what I post, in three ways:

Social networks love photographs because they're little dopamine factories: people love to click "like" on a selfie, and it briefly makes us feel good about ourselves. They're also hard to post without installing the mobile apps, which upload a lot of extra contextual information about our whereabouts, activities, and contacts behind our backs. So: I'm going to try to refrain from posting photographs.

I've never been into memes, and I wish I could filter out posts that are just a reshare of someone else's graphics. Similarly, these are dopamine factories. A lot of people don't even post their own words, choosing to express themselves entirely through other peoples' language. I think that's the most harmful of all - repeatedly using other peoples' words instead of your own, on a platform you're likely to use many times a day, where your dopamine levels are also being affected, seems like it might re-enforce those words and behaviors. So I plan on unfollowing meme posters.

And finally, I'm going to stop posting links with one line of context. If I'm posting outrageous political content, in particular, I'll write my thoughts at length, and try and have a real conversation. Otherwise, all I'm doing is posting in order to have my anger reinforced, and adding to the echo chamber.

And maybe I'll leave social media entirely again, and resort to posting on this site alone. Who knows. What I do know is that by being aware of my addictive tendencies, and consciously understanding that social media is at best a distraction, I can make more room for being present, dealing with the real-life factors that make me stressed out, and finding enduring, long-term happiness.

Photo by nikko macaspac on Unsplash

There's been a lot of talk so far this year about venture capital funding as an agent of harm. This is both good and bad.

For the first time in a while, alternatives to venture capital funding are being seriously discussed, which I think is a really positive development for the industry. On the other hand, some of the discussion ventures into hyperbole, and I think there really are situations when VC is the best solution.

During 2017 and most of 2018, I was Director of Investments on the west coast for Matter Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm and accelerator that supported teams with the potential to create a more informed, inclusive, and empathetic environment. I wasn't a partner of the firm; the closest analogue is something like an Associate+, where I had the freedom to decide who we invested in, and I sourced, interviewed, researched and effectively closed the deal with the teams, but the Managing Partner's signature was on the legal documents and he hit the button to wire the funds. Previously, my startup Known had been funded by the same firm. And before that, I'd co-founded another startup, which was grown without outside investment for its first few years. I've also been an advisor to, and employee of, VC-funded startups ranging from early rounds to hundreds of millions of dollars.

So I've seen various kinds of funding, and I've been involved in deals on various sides of the table. And I have some pretty strong opinions.

Investment isn't something most founders get to do without. It takes a certain amount of privilege to be able to start something without outside money. My first startup was bootstrapped, but I would be dishonest if I said that bootstrapping didn't include socialized healthcare (I couldn't have done it without the NHS), and help from my parents, whose house I lived in. Not everybody has the benefit of a strong safety net, or that kind of family support. And in particular, if you want (or need) to live in a tech hub, or you have to pay developers, or there's a legal cost involved, then outside money is required. Bootstrapping is not a realistic route for most people. It should go without saying that the people most able to do it are affluent white men - and that's not the only demographic we want to see starting and running businesses.

So startups typically need investment. Ideally, that investment should not just support the startup's financial goals, but its strategic and ethical goals, too.

I'm proud to know the founders of the Zebra movement, which seeks to establish a new movement for startups that champions more sustainable growth, more inclusive, cross-disciplinary teams, and revenue-bound business models.

I think it's one of the most important change movements - if not the most important - in the technology industry today. While venture capitalists are looking for unicorns - startups that grow quickly to become worth more than a billion dollars - zebras are more common, very sustainable, and actually real. As the New York Times reported:

But for every unicorn, there are countless other start-ups that grew too fast, burned through investors’ money and died — possibly unnecessarily. Start-up business plans are designed for the rosiest possible outcome, and the money intensifies both successes and failures. Social media is littered with tales of companies that withered under the pressure of hypergrowth, were crushed by so-called “toxic V.C.s” or were forced to raise too much venture capital — something known as the “foie gras effect.”

If only startups with the potential to rapidly become billion dollar companies can obtain investment, we'll only get to use certain kinds of services.

VC-funded businesses need to grow fast - not necessarily in terms of user numbers, but in terms of perceived value - and don't have an incentive to become profitable until much later in their lifetimes, if at all. A VC-funded startup will typically raise "friends and family" funding (more on this later); then, once they've de-risked their business a little, they'll raise a "seed" round (usually $1-1.5M); then more de-risking before a "series A" ($5-10M); then a "series B" ($15-30M); etc, until the startup is either acquired by a larger company, or makes its shares available on the public markets through an IPO. At each stage, investors buy a stake in the company at a more expensive price, driving up the valuation. Sometimes investors from earlier rounds can sell their shares as part of a later round, but the most money is made during an acquisition or IPO.

In other words, either the startup becomes strategically valuable to a larger entity, or it becomes enormous and valuable enough to float on the stock market. VC doesn't leave much room for anything else. Venture capitalists take money from Limited Partners (wealthy individuals, pension funds, university endowments, etc) who expect three times their money to be returned within a short time period (8-10 years is normal). Because most startups will fail, that means VCs are looking for ones that have the potential to return 30-40X their money in under a decade.

That’s a tall order for just about any business. And note that sustainability or societal impact are not considered here. These startups are, in effect, a financial vehicle. And while venture capital certainly has its uses - startups like Facebook and Uber were able to ride VC funding to great effect - a world where it's the only available model leaves a lot of use cases and communities unaddressed. It's worth saying that most venture capitalists are white men, and 98% of VC funding goes to men.

It also puts startups in great jeopardy. To raise a further round of funding, you don't just need to grow and de-risk your business; you also need to be in an industry that venture capitalists continue to be excited about. Because some years may pass between funding rounds, it's possible that the internet landscape has changed in that time, too. Whereas a profitable business is master of its own destiny, businesses that require future investment to survive are subject to investor whims.

We've seen the human impact of this problem several times recently. In the media industry, layoffs at companies like Mic, BuzzFeed and Vice have shown the limitations of the model. As VentureBeat reported last year:

But while corporate owners continue to fumble around in search of a solution, the reality is that venture capital was never going to be the answer for news outlets. VCs demand big returns that require bigger growth and soaring valuations. That‘s fine when you’re talking about things like social networking sites or a software or cloud service that might have big upfront costs but can clearly deliver sustainable profits once it reaches scale.

Some industries are incompatible with venture capital, regardless of their value. For these industries in particular, alternatives are needed.

It's a complicated problem: investors rarely participate alone, so there needs to be an ecosystem for a new model to become widespread. Until then, VC remains the most accessible, and in lots of ways pragmatic, funding route for most startups. It's exciting, then, to see alternative forms of investment emerge.

When I was still running Known, we applied to (and were rejected) by Indie.vc, an off-shoot of O'Reilly Alpha Tech Ventures, which was the first firm to really publicize revenue-based models. Bryce Roberts gave a talk at IDEO in San Francisco, and I was enamored. Whereas VC prioritizes growth, Indie.vc makes money when startups make revenue. Its deal documents are publicly available on GitHub: the short version is that at a pre-arranged time after investment, the startup buys back an equity option from the investor as a percentage of its revenue. If it chooses to raise VC funds instead of making equity (or decides to sell), the investment converts into a percentage of the company.

Indie.vc, by its own admission, is designed for post-revenue startups: if you need money to get to that stage, it's not going to help you. As I've already mentioned, most founders need help getting their venture off the ground to begin with. While some can raise money from friends and family, there is inherent privilege here: most people don’t have friends and family with that kind of money available to invest.

The Matter portfolio company Creative Action Network, which had gone through Matter's second class, raised further money by converting to a steward ownership model after years of bootstrapping:

We connected with Purpose Ventures, a new firm based in SF and Germany who liked what we were doing and more importantly, introduced us to a novel model for companies like us who needed capital and wanted to stay independent. The ownership concept is called Steward Ownership, the idea that companies should exist to do something for society beyond maximize shareholder profit — a fairly commonplace notion in Europe (and throughout American history) and that the people making decisions for the company should be the ones running it, not a board made up of outside investors.

Purpose is a little more dogmatic: whereas Indie.vc gives startups the option of following a VC route, steward ownership companies are less likely to follow that path, not least because Purpose requires companies to disallow investors from having controlling rights. The flipside is that it may invest earlier in a business's life, as long as it promises to restructure to follow this model. (Alongside CAN, Purpose Ventures has also invested in Buffer, which is a poster-child for transparency and alternative investment.)

There are two new entrants into this market: TinySeed, an accelerator for bootstrappers, and Earnest Capital, which presents itself as early-stage funding for boostrappers. Of course, by definition, any company taking funding from either won't be bootstrapping, but I like that they exist, and it's a good way to position yourself as being in contrast with VC.

Both have a very similar model to Indie.vc: the investor takes a percentage of revenue, but can also retain a percentage of equity in the company in case the founders decide to pursue VC or a sale later on. The result is optionality for the founders, and downside protection for the investor.

Matt Wensing created a financial model for each investor, using a hypothetical software company called Array as a lens:

For the scrappiest founders (with minimal salary requirements), Earnest offers reduced ownership, assuming strong early-stage profitability to enable repayment and a long horizon to enjoy the cap; for suburbanites looking to quit their day jobs, or businesses investing 100% back into growth, TinySeed and Indie.vc are strong options, as their cash draws are simply smaller early on with salary triggers that are higher or non-existent. For TinySeed founders, this will come at the cost of cash in the post-seed, pre-exit phase. Meanwhile, if you plan to raise a single round of capital, Indie.vc’s redemption program provides the lowest long-term equity cost by a wide margin.

I'd be interested in a financial analysis from an investor's perspective. I'm particularly excited about TinySeed, which also provides a year-long remote accelerator, the value of which is not to be sniffed at. But all of these are solid options.

Which brings me back to media. Matter invested in early-stage media startups, but using a venture capital model. I no longer have access to its portfolio data, but I wish I could run an analysis to see what effect a TinySeed-like model would have had on fund profitability. Of course, it would have made different decisions, too: it likely would have chosen its ventures using a stronger revenue lens, testing for bootstrapper mindsets. Whereas media is not necessarily a strong venture capital market - mostly because many VCs have lost interest - I think there's real potential for investors to make money from revenue-driven media startups using a revenue share model.

We won't know for sure until more investors embrace alternative models, experiment with new kinds of deals, and empower a wholly different set of entrepreneurs. That'll take time, analysis, and not a small amount of failure while the ideas are honed and processes optimized.

And that's another reason why those Zebras are so important. They've convened a space for this conversation to happen, for information to be shared, and for new investors and founding teams to rise from the ashes of discarded old models. I'm very grateful they exist. They have the potential to change the way the tech industry is funded. And through that, how the world creates, discovers, and shares information.

Things are changing, and a growing number of founders and investors are here for it. I certainly am.

Photo by Lisa H on Unsplash

Books

Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates. A visceral, stunningly-written insight into the brutal reality of a lived experience we’re all complicit in.

The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism, by David Golumbia. I don't agree with all of his arguments, but he makes some good points about the pseudoeconomics and quietly right-wing assumptions that are very prevalent in blockchain communities.

The Hacking of the American Mind: The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of Our Bodies and Brains, by Robert Lustig. A dive into the brain science of addiction and depression, and how they are harnessed by corporations who want to make a buck. Fascinating to me; I've already changed my behavior as a result. Although it's not really discussed directly, I could draw a direct line between platforms optimizing for "engagement" and its effects on the brains of their users. But the most important thing this book taught me is the brain science differences between pleasure and happiness. The latter is the thing to aim for.

Talking to my Daughter About the Economy (Or, How Capitalism Works - And How it Fails), by Yanis Varoufakis. A profoundly humanist, kind introduction to economics and capitalism. It turned out to be a good chaser to the previous book - whereas that was about the brain science differences, this dove into the economic framework that encourages short-term reward.

(I had hoped to finish Octavia E Butler's Kindred inside the month, but .. not quite. One thing it's important to note: I'm aware that each of these books is non-fiction and written by a man, and I'm fixing my reading list for next month.)

Notable Articles

The ABCs of Jacobin. An interesting exploration of how a socialist print magazine has managed to thrive in a time of general doom for the media.

The Biggest Secret: My Life as a New York Times Reporter in the Shadow of the War on Terror. Fascinating and disturbing. Newspapers should never be complicit with the intelligence apparatus.

I Was A Cable Guy. I Saw The Worst Of America. This went semi-viral over the holiday, but it's worth reading if you haven't. Come for the Cheney anecdote; stay for the well-observed notes about American life. It's a full meal.

I Gave a Bounty Hunter $300. Then He Located Our Phone. Your phone is a tracking device, and the networks are making money from it being so.

What It Felt Like When “Cat Person” Went Viral. "Many horror stories revolve around this theme: if we could eavesdrop on all the quick, dismissive thoughts that other people were having about us, we would go insane. We are simply not meant to see ourselves as others see us."

No Matter How Thin I Get, I’ll Always Be the Fat Guy. An honest, painful look at how weight shame affects you long after the weight itself is gone.

How ‘traditional masculinity’ hurts the men who believe in it most. It hurts all of us, but: '“Everybody has beliefs about how men should behave,” says Ronald Levant, who was the APA president when the guidelines were initially conceived, and who has worked on them ever since. “We found incredible evidence that the extent to which men strongly endorse those beliefs, it’s strongly associated with negative outcomes.” The more men cling to rigid views of masculinity, the more likely they are to be depressed, or disdainful, or lonely.' I've certainly seen this duplicated among people I know.

2 founders are not always better than 1. Solo founders are twice as likely to succeed as co-founders.

After 25 years studying innovation, here is what I have learned. Clay Christensen wrote the Innovator's Dilemma and its sequel. Even he has realized that it's not about what you accomplish: it's about who you help. I could have done without the part about God, but it's his truth.

Martin Luther King was no prophet of unity. He was a radical. Dr King was a Marxist, and - particularly in these times - we should do better to remember his whole legacy.

“The Linux of social media”—How LiveJournal pioneered (then lost) blogging. LiveJournal was a pioneer. I was a heavy user for a very long time, and it was a wonderful way to make friends, share fears, and see the inner narratives of people I cared about in a very intimate way. No social media platform has come close since.

It’s the End of News as We Know It (and Facebook Is Feeling Fine). "So right-wing sites and clickbait dominate the platform that dominates American news consumption. And that same platform, despite its stated commitment to supporting “quality news,” keeps making it harder for people to find serious journalism."

Social media is rotting democracy from within. "At the inauguration of Brazil’s new far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, in early January, a crowd of his supporters began a surprising chant. They weren’t cheering for Bolsonaro or his running mate or their party; instead, they were reciting the names of social media platforms." Fascists were chanting "Facebook! Facebook! Facebook!" because they credited it for their win.

This Is What Happens When You Try to Sue Your Boss. Arbitration agreements should be illegal.

The Personal Toll of Whistle-Blowing. Sheer tragedy in the course of doing the right thing.

The World-Record Instagram Egg Is Going to Make Someone Very Rich. This story is completely insane to me. It's 2019's Million Dollar Homepage. "In a slide deck, Jerry Media proposed that the egg crack to reveal the words Impeach Trump as Trump popped out and did the chicken dance. The agency even created a short animated video demonstrating the stunt."

At Least You Can Leave. 'There’s a conversation I’ve had with several British friends. We’ll all be moaning about Brexit affecting us and how the UK’s dysfunctional politics means there is no way to express this electorally, and then they’ll say; “But you’re lucky. At least you can leave.”'

The Guardian is reporting that Microsoft has installed NewsGuard by default in new installs of its Microsoft Edge mobile browser. The Daily Mail is one of the affected publications:

Visitors to Mail Online who use Microsoft Edge can now see a statement asserting that “this website generally fails to maintain basic standards of accuracy and accountability” and “has been forced to pay damages in numerous high-profile cases”.

Now, don't get me wrong: the Daily Mail is a horrendous excuse for a newspaper that, indeed, appears to bend the truth in order to further a toxic, conservative agenda. But let's zoom out a bit and examine this feature in the abstract.

NewsGuard assesses news websites manually, and gives them a rating for creditability and transparency. Based on that rating, it then assigns the website a red or green rating, indicating whether you should trust it or not:

These ratings are then displayed next to website content, and embedded into search engine results, via NewsGuard's browser plugin.

As a stand-alone plugin, this is probably fine. If you've made an active decision to install it, and you trust its editorial team to provide ratings, then great: you're informed about the process, you know that NewsGuard provides subjective ratings, and you've made the decision to overlay them over your web browsing experience.

As a default feature of a web browser, it's quite another story. For these users, it's a core part of their web experience. As far as they're concerned, this is a built-in feature, endorsed by Microsoft, that provides objective ratings on the content you browse. NewsGuard has been handed the ability to decide which content and information these users should trust.

These aren't just some do-gooder journalists. NewsGuard's advisory board contains the former head of the CIA and the first Secretary for Homeland Security. In light of this, some hypothetical questions to ask include: how might an independent website publishing the Pentagon Papers have been rated? What if a publisher is considered to be politically subversive while maintaining accuracy? In the wrong hands, could this mechanism suppress whistleblowers?

A web browser has no business telling you whether to trust the content you're accessing, except on technical grounds. If the web is to remain an impartial platform that supports freedom of speech, it cannot make value judgments on that speech. At least not by default: the extensions you install in your browser are up to you.

The whole point of the web is that it's decentralized, and anyone can become a publisher at any time. Yes, disinformation is a real problem. But it shouldn't be used as an excuse to put trust in the whole platform under central control. To do so introduces a real risk for the health of the internet, and, because freedom of speech is a prerequisite for it to function, for the health of democracy.

It sounds ludicrous now, but back in 2014, when I cofounded Known as a startup, a lot of people were questioning whether a business even needed a website. Pockets of people - for example in the indieweb community, which I enthusiastically joined - were pointing out how short-sighted this was, but it was a minority opinion. There was Facebook and Twitter! Why would you want to have any kind of property that you fully controlled on the internet?

Fast forward to today, and most companies have seen the flaws in that argument. If your digital presence is how most of your customers find and interact with you, giving it over to some third party company with its own agenda is not going to serve you well. This morning, CNN's digital chief Meredith Artley says as much in an interview with Kara Swisher: going where your users are was a counterproductive startegy. You have to reach out to them and make spaces that they want to visit.

But my hypothesis with Known wasn't just that people would want to own their own websites again, and that we should make it as easy to publish on their own site as it is to publish on social media. It was part of it, but I had something bigger in mind.

Anyone who's building any kind of business - whether it's a media property, a brick and mortar store, a startup, or a food truck - knows that you have to understand your customers and meet their needs if you want to be successful. For most people, that means talking to them, again and again. When the New York Times first went online as part of AOL - before it even launched a website - the team took the opportunity to sit in the chat rooms and talk to people. The internet is a conversation, not a one-way broadcast medium, which the Cluetrain Manifesto tried to tell us 20 years ago. And businesses all over the world are doing their best to talk to people on social media.

But the same ownership principle applies. Just as companies realized that they need to own their online presence, they will begin realizing that the conversations they're having on third party social media platforms are templated for the benefit of those platforms. If they want to have deeper conversations, build trust and loyalty, and have a greater influence over the form of the discussion, then they need to own the conversation spaces, too. (And there's a lot to be said for not giving companies like Facebook all that insight data.)

Tools that allow companies to build their own social spaces as easily as they can build their own websites are important. It's something I learned when I built Elgg, although that platform is very bound in the desktop-based MySpace era. Anyone should be able to start a space to have a social conversation in 5 minutes, in a way that they own the data and can customize it for their needs. But while existing tools like Mighty Networks (and Slack) or forum tools like Discourse are great for what they do, there aren't any great platforms that let people actually build a site that directly fits the community they want to build. All online communities tend to look the same. If we know that the form of a converation influences its content - and it does - then it becomes clear how counter-productive a one size fits all approach really is.

And then the bigger picture is that if this idea is successful, moving from one monopolistic social network to lots of smaller communities loosely joined will make for a healthier internet.

That was the vision for Known: to let anyone build easy to use social spaces that they control, and liberate online conversation in the process. First as a startup, and now as an open source project. We were a little early, and made some (recoverable) mistakes. But it's still a mission I believe in.

Each year, Harvard University's Nieman Lab asks media and journalism professionals to make predictions about the year ahead. It's a useful barometer for the media industry zeitgeist, and true to form, 2019's predictions are all worth a read.

For the first time, I was asked to contribute. That piece is here:

In 2019, big tech companies will respond to overwhelming public opinion and lawmaker concerns, fundamentally changing the way they view privacy. Browsers will block third-party tracking by default. New legislation, inspired by Europe’s GDPR, will prevent invasive apps from spying on your calls and contacts. The adoption of always-on microphones in the nation’s living rooms will begin to slow. As revelations about technology’s role in political wrongdoing become increasingly serious, the surveillance capitalism that has defined the mobile internet era will come to a halt.

Angèle Cristin asks that newsrooms don't just consider the tech industry's use of algorithms, but their own as well:

From their use of invasive tracking systems to their reliance on real-time web analytics and their dependence on social media platforms for distribution, newsrooms are deeply enmeshed in the algorithmic world, as I have written elsewhere. To date, newsrooms have not lingered on this fact. Unlike the glory of the resistance to Trump or the breaking news of Facebook’s mishandling data, the co-dependency of news organizations and algorithmic technologies has remained a dirty topic for most journalists.

Francesco Marconi, who collaborated deeply with Matter while he was at the Associated Press, advocates applying human-centered techniques to journalism:

Iterative journalism begins with people, but it looks beyond just demographic data to understand how individuals feel and what they need when seeking news. Knowing someone’s age, gender, and what article they just read might tell journalists something — but it doesn’t tell them how to approach a story in the way most relevant for members of a certain community.

An Xiao Mina contemplates the death of consensus:

In 2019, let the idea that we’re seeing the death of truth die. What looks like the death of truth is actually the death of consensus, and a broader transition to a world of dissensus nudged along by a wide variety of media outlets online, on television and radio, and in other forms of media. Misinformation spreads most effectively in this environment because someone, somewhere will find information that fits an existing worldview, and it’s that deeper worldview that’s much harder to change.

Roberto Hernandez has a warning for bigots that I particularly hope comes true:

If you have said something racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic in a professional setting — whether being at work, an industry event or listserv — but don’t see it as a big deal…we see you. And we will replace you.

And Steve Grove, Director of the Google News Lab, predicts that tech's work with journalism will be measured and assessed:

The public conversation on this topic is reaching a fever pitch. Issues that were once just discussed at news industry conferences by experts are now being discussed at dinner tables by families and friends. And regulatory conversations, highlighted by the EU copyright directive in Europe but spanning governments around the globe, are challenging the framework of how tech platforms host or link to news content. If and how people and governments shift their thinking on how digital news content should be discovered and distributed will in turn affect the momentum and appetite that tech companies have for the news space — and ultimately what news users will be able to access via tech platforms.

There's so much more. Every piece is worth reading and absorbing. The full index is here.

Most of Silicon Valley is financed with venture capital, and its success there has made it attractive in other industries. The model isn't always transferrable: media companies have raised using VC dollars to very little success, for example.

That's because VC depends on scalability. The core idea is that an investor - or more usually, a collection of investors, all investing on the same terms and at the same time, in a round of funding - will put money into a company while it's relatively small and unproven, and the investment is therefore relatively cheap. The company will then hopefully grow enormously quickly, proving out its hypotheses and gaining value at a rapid rate. Venture capital investors deploy money from a fund, itself invested into by their limited partners (rich people and institutions like pension funds). They have usually promised their partners that the fund duration will be ten years or less, and correspondingly, they want to see returns from their investments very quickly. The goal in many funds is to return 3X the value to their limited partners; because most investments will fail, they're looking to invest in companies that have the potential to return 30-40 times their money.

Although secondary markets exist, VCs only typically make money when an investment is acquired by another company or when it IPOs on the stock market (an exit). So in addition to enormous growth expectations, there's a built-in timer on these investments. You can think of most VC-funded Silicon Valley startups as being financial vehicles more than they are product or service companies. That's why advertising has been such a popular business model: stopping and asking people to pay for your product slows your growth, and therefore your attractiveness to investors.

For some companies - Facebook, say - this model works exceptionally well. For others (like those media companies), not so much. But VC has become the de facto funding model for internet services, because of its abundance, and because that's what a lot of the tech press chooses to talk about. In turn, the parameters for venture capital funding have become misunderstood as the parameters for starting any kind of venture on the internet at all. Because VC won't look at a venture that doesn't have a potential market of billions of dollars, it's become understood that ventures with smaller market sizes are not going to survive. Because VC needs high growth, it's become understood that all startup ventures should aim to be high-growth. And because exits are most often acquisitions, it's become understood that market consolidation and a trend towards monopoly is actually a good thing.

Venture capital has, inadvertently, created a template for what can be built on the internet. It's harmful, and it's a lie.

This is going to become even more problematic if predictions of a downturn turn out to be correct. As Fred Wilson wrote:

However, I do think a difficult macro business and political environment in the US will lead investors to take a more cautious stance in 2019. It would not surprise me to see total venture capital investments in 2019 decline from 2018. And I think we will see financings take longer, diligence on new investments actually occur, and valuations to come under pressure for even the most attractive opportunities.

A common, and correct, critcism of alternative funding models has been that they don't adequately describe the upside for potential investors. For example, in a revenue-sharing model, investors put money into a company in exchange for a percentage of revenue up to a cap, which might be 5X. If an investor puts in $50,000, they expect to receive $250,000 back, in payments that constitute 10 or 20% of the company's total revenue (usually once the company is making enough annual recurring revenue that these payments aren't an existential threat). Notice that this is dramatically lower than the 30-40X expected from VC - and while it could be argued that a revenue-focused company is less likely to fail than a growth-focused one, there aren't actually any numbers to back that up yet. So it could just be an investment with a smaller upside for the investor.

For the startup, the numbers start to look daunting after it takes more than even a small amount of seed funding: while repaying $250,000 to investors is potentially reasonable for a profitable company, a $1M investment might need $5M to be returned from revenue. That might be fine if we're talking about a VC-sized investment opportunity - but if we are, why wouldn't the startup take VC money and forgo paying dividends?

The answer, I think, is to think smaller and more specific. Rather than trying to build something that addresses a large portion of the internet, build something that addresses a highly niche group that has been thus far unspported because of the industry's focus on growth. Instead of being the next Facebook or Uber, think about being the next MetaFilter or The Well.

Lifestyle businesses have a bad reputation because it's harder for the financial ecosystem to make money from them. But for their owners, save for a very small number of outlier founders who ride VC to high net worth valuations, they can be every bit as lucrative. And you get to do it on your terms, serving a community that you genuinely care about, rather than following a paint-by-numbers path to success. The irony is that by serving a smaller community well, in a way that doesn't lend itself well to scaling fast, founders are probably setting the groundwork for a company that really could be VC-scale, if they wanted it to be. (The choice is theirs.)

As for the investment return question, I think you have to adjust the scope and definition of investment and returns to be about more than money. Communities can be stakeholders in other ways. Consider the Kickstarter / Indiegogo crowdfunding model, where investors don't get equity at all - instead, their rewards are early access to products and services, and even more than that, the social aura of having helped something they care about to be birthed into the world. By deeply understanding the community they're serving before you build anything, making connections, and getting to know them as people, founders can motivate them to help provide the seed funding and momentum they need.

VC is going to continue to be one part of the funding landscape. But I think we need to see it as just one part. There is nothing wrong with building something that is smaller and more focused. There's nothing wrong with bringing your community into your venture more deeply. And there's nothing wrong with considering how to remake the tech industry as one that is less monopolistic, inherently more inclusive, and more resilient, through rejecting unicorns in favor of lots of small pieces, loosely joined.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Happy New Year! May your year be full of joy and success, by your definitions and on your terms.

I think that qualification is important: your definitions of joy and success, achieved in a way that's right for you. We're all innundated with messages telling us that we're not enough, that now is the time to make a change for the better - you slob! - and I think these all represent empty illusions of forward momentum. Some of them, like aggressive calls to lose weight or make more money, border on cruelty. All of them carry a commercial subtext. You'll be a better person if you just buy this thing.

This year, I want to make some much more positive resolutions.

Sure, sharing your goals makes them less achievable, but the individual goals aren't really the point. And I'm certainly not going to beat myself up if I don't achieve them. It's much more about the theme and direction of my year - the broad strokes of how I hope to live and interact with the world. This year, the theme is "resist" - not just politically, but personally. Our political system isn't the only substrate at the mercy of rich manipulators wielding trillions of dollars. Advertising and commercialism want to break us down and reconstitute our needs and worries in terms of products to be sold. Money is in all of our blood, like mercury poisoning, leading us to poor decisions and unnecessary anxiety.

So here are some thoughts on how I want to live in 2019:

Try to be kind (vs nice). Have compassion for everyone, and a strong moral compass that leans towards equality, inclusion, and democracy. Don't tolerate intolerance. Don't be conflict-avoidant when strong words or actions are necessary. And remember that being kind includes being kind to yourself.

Have a bias towards action. Rather than waffle or over-plan, plant a flag and take action, even if that action turns out to be imperfect. I can always course correct. But life doesn't wait.

Make sure people know I love them. Tell them often.

Be a man. Which is to say, by my definition, not some arbitrary, outdated ideas of what masculinity entails. Every man (and every woman, and every human) gets to decide what being themself means.

Try to be healthier. Be happier in my own skin, and more forward-facing in my thoughts. Be stronger, physically and mentally. But remember that vulnerability is strength too; don't harden. And don't succumb to other peoples' ideas of how I should improve myself unless I'm sure they're not a reflection of their own desires and neuroses.

Try not to make fear-based decisions. Instead, think: where do I want to be in 2 years? In 5? In 10? Avoid acting in the short term as much as possible.

Read more. Books, not posts (although posts are great too). In 2019 I want to try and read a book a week.

Write (and draw) more. But only in partnership with reading more.

Limit my exposure. At Thanksgiving 2018, I decided to log out of social media and remove all my social apps -  and I've been blogging almost every day instead. It's the best thing I've ever done on the internet as an adult. Suddenly, I was far removed from influencers, sponsored messages, and the outrage of the day. I feel no less connected to the people I love, or to what's happening in the world (in fact, I read far more journalism). I plan to continue this indefinitely for Facebook and its subsidiaries, although I'll probably return to Twitter now and then.

And finally, some quick specifics: Stop using Amazon. Be much better at email. Don't use ridesharing apps except in emergencies. Make eating out a special occasion instead of a regular activity. Commit to helping out with a Presidential campaign, somehow. And find ways to be more environmentally sustainable.

What are your resolutions? What are your hopes for the next year?

Picture: the first light of 2019, over Lake Mendocino, just outside Ukiah, CA.

We have a half gallon of eggnog in the fridge.

I'm surprised by how old it is. I don't remember it really featuring in British supermarkets, and based on its modern incarnation - Christmas drinking custard - I would have guessed that it had been invented in maybe the fifties or sixties, for an America audience. But nog was already a kind of English ale in the late 1600s. Posset, an alcoholic drink where milk was curdled with wine or ale and spiced, was mixed with egg as early as the 1300s. The word "eggnog" is first recorded as having been used in 1775, the year before the Declaration of Independence was issued.

In 1826, military cadets at West Point rioted because they were served alcohol-free eggnog. In the end, some cadets went on a mission to a tavern a couple of miles away and came back with gallon jugs of whisky, before getting boisterously drunk and wreaking havoc across the Academy. In the end, 70 cadets were arrested.

Ten years ago today, my mother told us that she'd been diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, the disease that at that time had killed my grandmother. She had finally got her persistent cough checked out, and gone through a series of increasingly invasive tests. And now, days before Christmas, we had the result.

The average life expectancy after an IPF diagnosis is 3 to 5 years. We didn't know what was going to happen, and typing this today, knowing this expectancy, I don't know why I didn't go through the logistical steps of moving to California to be closer to them immediately. There were things holding me back, of course - a whole life and roots and a network - but none of them were anywhere near as important. In the event, it took until she was carrying an oxygen tank on her back for me to pack two suitcases and make the jump. My grandmother had worn an oxygen tank, and then she had been gone. It was my first conscious introduction to losing a loved one, and I remember, at six years old, sitting in my bedroom while I heard my mother weeping in the living room. My grandmother had been in Austin, Texas, while we had been in Oxford, England, far away from her bedside.

Slowly, the trappings of my old life stripped away. Her diagnosis was a contributing factor to my leaving Elgg: suddenly, life was too short to deal with interpersonal bullshit. I had thought - hoped - that I was going to move with my girlfriend at the time, who I would eventually ask to marry me. That didn't happen, and it took me years to accept that it wasn't simply because I wasn't good enough. Every tie, save for those of friendship, faded. I was in California now, building a new life, trying to live while being aware, every day, of the undercurrent of tragedy that brought me here. Some days, I would attend an open data event and talk about open source. Some days, my mother would be helicoptered from a regional hospital in order to save her life.

Over time, it became clear that we're all at the forefront of familial pulmonary fibrosis; my mother was discussed at medical conferences. My mother saw symptoms in her sister, my wonderful aunt Erica, who she dragged in to see her doctors. She had two lung transplants. Over time, her son, my beautifully-spirited, generous, kind cousin, was diagnosed, too. We laid them both to rest last year and this year respectively. I think about them both every day.

My mother had a double lung transplant in 2013. I was in their home the night they got the call, the conversation soundtracked by the two refrigerator-sized oxygen concentrators running in parallel to keep her alive. Oxygen concentrators use containers of distilled water to prevent the oxygen from drying you out, and the sound is somewhere between a diesel generator and an aquarium. But suddenly, they were gone, and the torpedo-sized oxygen tanks were no longer a daily fixture. Somewhere I still have the discarded green plastic caps; one of us was going to turn them into an art project, but none of us could.

It wasn't an easy recovery. The following five years brought stomach tubes, throat surgeries, pneumonia, and dialysis. This year in particular has been one of the most difficult. There is talk of needing more surgery, but surgery is off the table. I treasure every moment. My dad is like some kind of superhero, looking after her diligently and with love, despite his own health slipping. There is sadness and stress in every day, but there's also so much love.

Research is now advanced enough to know that our familial pulmonary fibrosis is a symptom of dyskeratosis congenita, an incurable genetic condition that affects how you produce telomerase, an enzyme that protects your telomeres. These are the end-caps to your chromosomes, which shorten as you age, and with stress or illness. When you don't have the right levels of telomerase, your telomeres shorten prematurely. The effect is particularly pronounced in areas where your cells reproduce and are refreshed more frequently, like your lungs, and your bone marrow. The implications are terrifying, but there is one that isn't: it's possible to test for it.

This summer, my sister and I decided to get tested together. We were warned of the insurance implications, but Europe was our safety net; if we had the genetic marker and insurance became a problem, we would relocate to somewhere with a functional healthcare system. The probability of neither of us having it was less than 25%. I gave up meat and alcohol in preparation for having to get a lot healthier; I knew the kinds of tests they made you do to prove you could cope with a lung transplant. Mostly, I hoped that my sister wouldn't have it; I could accept my own life coming to a premature end, but not hers. She's the most amazing person I've ever met, someone I am proud and bewildered to be related to; her life ending would be like turning the lights out in the universe. But in the end, we were clear, and both of us openly wept in the genetic counselor's office.

I don't know how much time we all get as a family, but we have today. We have this Christmas. I'm so grateful for the bonus time. This week, this holiday, I'm maing a resolution to be present, in the moment. I want to remember everything.

We have a half gallon of eggnog in the fridge. I can hear my family now, awake and down in the living room. I'm going to go downstairs, pour a little eggnog in my coffee - those West Point cadets missed a trick - and join them.

Corey has made an announcement about Matter over on its Medium publication:

I’m proud of the impact we’ve made, the team we’ve built, and the people and organizations that we have transformed. But now it’s time for me to flare.

For the last two years I have tried to secure Matter’s future. While I succeeded at figuring out how to successfully expand Matter and its unique culture to NYC and to tranform Matter into an organization that could continue to operate if I were hit by a bus, I have yet to successfully raise Matter Fund III and we’ve come to the end of our runway.

I've had the privilege of being on many sides of the Matter table. My third startup, Known, was funded by it, and I took part in the third accelerator class. I was a mentor and occasional advisor. And then I was asked to join the team and was the west coast Director of Investments. (I had an abstract ambition to one day come back as an LP, completing the set, but oh well.)

When I discovered Matter, it felt like an oasis: here was an accelerator that wanted to make the world more informed, empowered, and connected. An investment community that prized empathy and inclusivity. And rather than talking about this vaguely, or staying at 30,000 feet, the hands-on accelerator process was designed to give entrepreneurs the tools they needed to test their assumptions and succeed in the real world. It was Corey's process, and it worked - both for the entrepreneurs who took part in it, and for the media partners like KQED and the Associated Press who used it to improve their own internal innovation.

It changed my life.

Not just by teaching me the principles of human-centered venture design, although it did do that. Not just by taking a bet on my work, although I will always be grateful. But more than anything else, by introducing me to an amazing community of people who I'm proud to call my friends - and then allowing me to help build it.

It was meaningful work that allowed me to use every part of myself. It pushed me in ways I'd never been pushed before, and in the same way that participating in the accelerator transformed the way I'll build products and ventures forever, I am a much better person for having worked on that team. It was very far from just being a job. I worked and cried with founders late into the night. I helped some of the world's biggest media institutions work on their most existential problems. I helped bring Chelsea Manning to demo day. And I did it as part of a group of people who I still can't believe I got to be part of. Years later, I honestly still can't believe my luck.

I'm very grateful to Corey for founding this community, which I believe I'll be part of for the rest of my life. In the same way people talk about the PayPal Mafia, I think people will start talking about the Matter Underground in media circles: people who were part of the Matter community, changed by its values, and then went on to change media and technology for good. That also goes for the incredible people I worked with, which certainly includes Corey. I wish him the best in whatever he chooses to do next, and I can't wait to hear about it.

I'll finish by including this photo, which I stole from his post. It represents my single proudest moment in my professional career to date: the day that a group of people that I helped source, select and invest in walked through the garage door. Each one of them had a mission with the potential to create a more informed, inclusive, and empathetic society. And each of them was an amazing individual who I'm proud to know.

Corey's full post is here.

VICE has a long-running series where British writers bring photographers back to their hometowns, which I stumbled into this morning via Metafilter. It's stunning, and while I didn't recognize the Edinburgh entry almost at all, there was another piece that unexpectedly took my breath away.

I'm from Oxford as much as I'm from anywhere, but I've never read a piece that captured my experience of the city. Instead, it's always the opulent, ancient buildings of the university, the famous writers like CS Lewis and JRR Tolkein, or the plummy, upper middle class concerns of the North Oxford set. An outsider could be forgiven for thinking that the city was all cream teas and tennis.

Not so much. As Nell Frizzell writes:

Say its name and people will think of spires, books, bicycles, punting, philosophers and meadows. Few will think of cheap European lager, samosas, hardware shops, GCSEs, underage drinking, the number 3a bus or going twos on a roll-up beside a mental health hospital. They may not even think of the car factory, the warehouses on Botley Road, Powell's timber merchants, the registry office in Clarendon Shopping Centre, The Star pub, plantain sandwiches or Fred's Discount Store. But that's the Oxford I grew up in.

Me too. Nell's description of east Oxford is spot on, although we moved in different social circles; there was no cocaine in my world, even if we also gathered at exactly the same pub. All of these places are my places too, and the things she cares about in her hometown are things I care about also. In a life where I've lived in multiple countries and never quite found myself fitting in, including in the place I grew up, that's an incredible rareity.

I'm very glad I moved away - living in a variety of places has been right for me, and I expect I'll continue to move around. Having no nationality and no religion means that the pull to travel and exist in different contexts is strong. And Oxford really does have some deep problems. But that doesn't mean I don't miss it, too.

Because of the images that Oxford conjures in the minds of people who have never been there (and even some who have), I find it hard to explain where I came from. I can immediately taste the samosas and smell the beer-stained floorboards, but it's hard to convey. Now, at least, I have something I can point to; a description I actually recognize.

If you're interested in a realer Britain, the whole series is worth reading.

The New York Times report on Facebook's ongoing data sharing relationships is quite something. The gist is that even while it claimed that its data sharing relationships had been terminated in 2015 - to users and to governments around the world - many were still active into this year. Moreover, these relationships were established in such a way as to hide the extent of the data sharing from users, possibly in contravention of GDPR and its reporting responsibilities to the FTC:

“This is just giving third parties permission to harvest data without you being informed of it or giving consent to it,” said David Vladeck, who formerly ran the F.T.C.’s consumer protection bureau. “I don’t understand how this unconsented-to data harvesting can at all be justified under the consent decree.”

The company's own press release response to the reporting attempts to sugarcoat the facts, but essentially agrees that this happened. Data was shared with third parties during the period when the company declared that this wasn't happening, and often without user permission or understanding.
Back to the NYT article to make the implications clear:

The social network allowed Microsoft’s Bing search engine to see the names of virtually all Facebook users’ friends without consent, the records show, and gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read Facebook users’ private messages.

The social network permitted Amazon to obtain users’ names and contact information through their friends, and it let Yahoo view streams of friends’ posts as recently as this summer, despite public statements that it had stopped that type of sharing years earlier.

In September 2007, I flew out to Silicon Valley to participate in something called the Data Sharing Summit, organized by Marc Canter. At the time, I was working on Elgg, and we believed strongly in establishing open APIs so that people wouldn't be siloed into their social networks and web services. I met people there who have remained friends for the rest of my career. And all of us wanted open access to APIs so that users could move their data around, and so that startups wouldn't have as a high a barrier to entry into the market.

That was an ongoing meme in the industry ten years ago: open data, open APIs. It's one that has clearly informed Facebook's design and influential decisions. I certainly bought into it. And to some extent I still do, although I'd now prefer to go several steps further and architect systems with no central point of control or data storage at all. But such systems - whether centralized or decentralized - need to center around giving control to the user. Even at the Data Sharing Summit, we quickly realized that data control was a more meaningful notion than data ownership. Who gets to say what can happen to my data? And who gets to see it?

Establishing behind-the-scenes reciprocal data sharing agreements with partners breaks the implicit trust contract that a service has with its users.

Facebook clued us in to how much power it held in 2011, when it introduced its timeline feature. I managed to give this fairly asinine quote to the New York Times back then:

“We’ve all been dropping status updates and photos into a void,” said Ben Werdmuller, the chief technology officer at Latakoo, a video service. “We knew we were sharing this much, of course, but it’s weird to realize they’ve been keeping this information and can serve it up for anyone to see.”

Mr. Werdmuller, who lives in Berkeley, Calif., said the experience of browsing through his social history on Facebook, complete with pictures of old flames, was emotionally evocative — not unlike unearthing an old yearbook or a shoebox filled with photographs and letters.

My point had actually not so much been about "old flames" as about relationships: it became clear that Facebook understood everyone you had a relationship with, not just the people you had added as a friend. Few pieces dove into the real implications of having all that data in one place, because at the time it seemed like the stuff of dystopian science fiction. Some of us were harping on about it, but it was so far outside of mainstream discourse that it sounded crazy. But here we are, in 2018, and we've manifested the panopticon.

In the same way that the timeline made the implications of posting on Facebook clear, this year's revelations represent another sea change in our collective understanding. Last time - and every time there has been this kind of perspective shift - the Overton window has shifted and we've collectively adjusted our expectations to incorporate it. I worry that by next election, we'll be fairly used to the idea of extensive private surveillance (as a declared fact rather than ideological speculation), and the practice will continue. And then the next set of perspective shifts will be genuinely horrifying.

Questions left unanswered: what information is Facebook sharing with Palantir, or the security services? To what extent are undeclared data-sharing relationships used to deport people, or to identify individuals who should be closely monitored? Is it used to identify subversives? And beyond the effects of data sharing, given what we know about the chilling effects surveillance has on democracy, what effect on democratic discourse has the omnipresence of the social media feed already had - and to what extent is this intentional?

I'm done assuming good faith; I'm done assuming incompetence; I'm done assuming ignorance. I hope you are too.

Image: Elevation, section and plan of Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon penitentiary, drawn by Willey Reveley, 1791, from Wikipedia

Since August, I've been helping my friend Julien Genestoux at his startup Unlock.

Unlock is a protocol which enables creators to monetize their content with a few lines of code in a fully decentralized way. In the initial version, anyone can sell their work on the internet by adding two lines of code. Those are the only steps: create your content; add code; you're ready to accept payment. It's blockchain-based, so it's equally accessible to everyone in the world, both to buy and to sell.

It's really a decentralized protocol for access control. There are two elements to consider: a lock, and a set of  keys. You place a lock on some content to protect it; anyone with a key for that particular lock can access it. Publishers can use the same lock for as many different items of content as they want, and anyone with an appropriate key can access all of it. Content could be an article, a video, a podcast, or a software application. It can also be a mailing list, which is on the roadmap for 2019.

It's an open protocol at heart, which means it starts to get really interesting when other people begin to build on it. The initial Unlock code is a paywall; you can run our hosted version, or you can install the software and run your own. But you can also take the Unlock blockchain and structure and build something completely new. Over time, there will be more Unlock code and libraries that you can use as building blocks. Unlock, Inc doesn't need to be the central hub, and it doesn't need to own the blockchain. Unlike a service like Twitter, where the underlying company gets value by controlling access (and running ads), and therefore developers may get burned if they use it to underpin their products, Unlock the company is physically incapable of exerting central control over the Unlock Protocol.

I think what I've described is a good thing for the web - Unlock is the low-friction payments layer that should have been there from the very beginning - but much more is possible, and this isn't a "decentralize all the things!" argument. There are concrete benefits for businesses today. One thing I'm particularly excited about is that, because the blockchain is both transparent and decentralized, jointly-owned content becomes much more possible.

Two hypothetical examples:

Radiotopia is a podcast co-operative. Each podcast is wholly owned by its producer, but they raise money together and distribute funds as a stipend between them. Right now, they're fundraising using CommitChange; funds presumably pool to one central point - someone holds a bank account - and then are distributed by a human. But what if they could raise money by creating a lock that people purchase keys for, and the proceeds from that lock were automatically and transparently sent to every member of the Radiotopia network? They could still use CommitChange as a front end (particularly as it's based on the open source Houdini project), but their accounting and payments overhead would be dramatically lower. Each member of the network would also be able to trust that payments were made to them immediately and automatically. And for new networks - baby Radiotopias - creating a bundled content network becomes just a case of deciding to work together.

Project Facet is an open source project for collaborative journalism. Increasingly, in a world of budget cuts and changing business models, newsrooms need to collaborate to produce investigative reporting. Right now, they pool resources in informal ways, and produce separate stories based on the reporting. With the Unlock Protocol, they could collaborate on the substance of the stories themselves, and put them under a shared lock that automatically pools the revenue between the participating organizations. This would be much harder in a universe where you'd have a custodial bank account and an accountant who made payments; here it could be fully transparent, and fully automatic.

These are purely hypothetical, and non-exclusive; much more is possible. Just a flexible paywall, or paid-for mailing lists, are exciting. The point is that we can think beyond how we've traditionally restricted access, and how we've transferred value. Personally, in my work, I'm most motivated by concrete human use cases - and Unlock illustrates how blockchain services have a lot of potential. This isn't an ICO, and it's not a speculative coin play. It's a way for creators to pool and share value, and make money from their work in a flexible way. And that's exciting to me.

The code is fully open; you can get involved here.

Photo by Francois Hurtaud on Unsplash

There's a lot in the news this morning about online influence campaigns conducted by the Internet Research Agency, a propaganda firm with close ties to the Russian government. Two reports were prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee: one by an Austin-based security firm called New Knowlege, and the other by the Oxford Internet Institute's Computational Propaganda Project.

As of today, both are freely available online. Here's the full New Knowlege report; here's the full Oxford Institute Institute report.

This is the first time we've really heard about Instagram being used for an influence campaign, but it shouldn't be a surprise: if I say the word "influencer", it's probably the first platform that you think of. Like any decent digital advertising campaign, this one was cross-platform, recognizing that different demographics and communities engage on different sites. In a world where 44% of users aged 18 to 29 have logged out of the Facebook mothership, any campaign hoping to reach young people would to include Instagram. And of course, that's why Facebook bought the service to begin with.

News stories continue to paint this as some kind of highly sophisticated propaganda program masterminded by the Russian government. And it does seem like the Russian government was involved in this influence campaign. But this is how modern digital campaigns are run. People have been building Facebook Pages to gain as many likes as possible since the feature was released, precisely so they can monetize their posts and potentially sell them on to people who need to reach a large audience quickly. Influencers - people who are paid to seed opinions online - will represent $10 billion in advertising spending by 2020.

It is, of course, deeply problematic that a foreign influence campaign was so widespread and successful in the 2016 election - I have no desire to downplay this, particularly in our current, dire, political environment. But I also think we're skimming the surface: because of America's place in the world, it's highly likely that there were many other parallel influence campaigns, both from foreign and domestic sources. And all of us are subject to an insidious kind of targeted marketing for all kinds of things - from soft drinks to capitalism itself - from all kinds of sources.

The Iowa Writers' Workshop is one of the most influential artistic hubs of the twentieth century. Over half of the creative writing programs founded after its creation were done so by Iowa graduates; it helped spur the incredible creative boom in American literature over the next few decades. And its director, Paul Engle, funded it by convincing American institutions - like the CIA and the Rockefeller Foundation - that literature from an American, capitalist perspective would help fight communism. It could be argued that much of the literature that emerged from the Workshop's orbit was an influence campaign. More subtle and independent than the social media campaigns we see today, for sure, but with a similar intent: influence the opinions of the public in the service of a political goal.

And of course, Joseph Goebbels was heavily influenced in his approach by Edward Bernays, the American founder of modern public relations, who realized he could apply the principles of propaganda to marketing. Even today, that murderous legacy lives on: the Facebook misinformation campaigns around the genocide in Myanmar are its spiritual successor.

So political influence campaigns are not new, and they have the potential to do great harm. The Russian influence campaign is probably not even the most recent event in the long history of information warfare. While it's important to identify that this happened, and certainly to root out collusion with American politicians who may have illegally used this as a technique to win elections, I think it's also important to go a level deeper and untangle the transmisison vector as well as this particular incident.

Every social network subsists on influence campaigns to different degrees. There's no doubt that Facebook's $415 billion market cap is fuelled by companies who want to influence the feed where half of adults - disproportionately from lower incomes - get their news. That's Facebook's economic engine; it's how it was designed to work. The same is true of Instagram, Twitter, etc etc, with the caveat that a feed with a lower population density is less valuable, and less able to have a measurable impact on the public discourse at large. There's one exception: while Twitter has significantly lower user numbers, it is heavily used by journalists and educators, who are then liable to share information gleaned there. Consider the number of news stories of the form, "here's what Trump tweeted today," which are then read by people who have never logged on to Twitter and wouldn't otherwise have seen the tweets.

The root cause of these misinformation campaigns is that people will do whatever they can to obtain, or hold onto, power. I don't think solving this is going to be possible during the entire remaining span of human civilization. So instead, let's think about how we can limit the "whatever they can" portion of the sentence. If people are going to use every means at their disposal to obtain power, how can we safety-check the tools we make in order to inhibit people from using them for this purpose?

Moving on from targeted advertising is a part of the answer. So is limiting the size of social networks: Facebook's 2.27 billion monthly active users are a disease vector for misinformation. As I've written before, its effective monopoly is directly harmful. Smaller communities, loosely joined, running different software and monetized in different ways, would make it much harder for a single campaign to spread to a wide audience. Influence campaigns would continue to run, but they would encounter community borders much more quickly.

A final piece is legislation. It's time for both privacy and transparency rules to be enacted around online advertising, and around user accounts. For their protection, users need to know if a message was posted by a human; they also need to know who placed an advertisement. And advertising for any kind of political topic in an election period should be banned outright, no matter who placed it, as it was in the UK. You can't have a democratic society without free and open debate - and you can't have free and open debate if one side is weighted with the force of millions of dollars, Facebook's market cap be damned.

Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash