Werd I/O

Flipboard is making its entire platform fediverse-compatible, allowing anyone on any fediverse platform (eg Mastodon, Pixelfed, and eventually Threads) to follow content shared there.

"By March Flipboard says it plans to allow anyone on the platform to open their account to the fediverse and allow any Flipboard user to follow any fediverse account from within the Flipboard app. At that point, Flipboard will essentially be an ActivityPub-based platform like Mastodon or Pixelfed but with an interface designed for reading articles instead of bite-sized posts. It’ll be the biggest thing in the fediverse — at least until Threads shows up for real."

Extremely cool. And this is still only the beginning. #Technology

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"Immigrants are poisoning the blood of the country" is something a real Presidential candidate said in 2023. You know which one. Here's a clue: he's by far the frontrunner for Republican candidate, and has a fair chance of being elected for a second term next year.

Nice people made the best Nazis. The people who want to stay out of it, who don't want to offend people by taking a stand, who just want to follow the rules and get by for themselves, even as great harms are being committed upon other people. I think it's up to all of us to let our friends, family, and neighbors know that this kind of rhetoric is wildly unacceptable. It's not possible to support Donald Trump and not be a racist. It's not possible to support Donald Trump and not be, at some level, a fascist. And I think it's important to be loud about it. #Democracy

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This story seems a little suspect, but still worrying:

"A marketing team within media giant Cox Media Group (CMG) claims it has the capability to listen to ambient conversations of consumers through embedded microphones in smartphones, smart TVs, and other devices to gather data and use it to target ads."

The official website almost reads like a Yes Men parody of online advertising - and could well be. It could also be a "fake door" test by CMG. I would be surprised if this was legal or permitted by device vendors like Amazon or Google (which is not to say that I trust either of them).

It's hard to imagine that something this egregious could actually be real. Of course, if it was real, it should have been shut down yesterday. #Technology

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Police body cams have turned out to be a sort of trust whitewashing: a way to demonstrate openness without the accompanying requirement to be open at all. In practice, they're a sham.

"Hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars have been spent on what was sold as a revolution in transparency and accountability. Instead, police departments routinely refuse to release footage — even when officers kill."

This is a characteristically deeply-reported piece from ProPublica which is both disappointing and unsurprising to hear. We need real police reform - we've always needed real police reform. Cameras were never going to cut it alone. #Democracy

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Big news for people who can get pregnant and the people who care about them (which should be everyone):

"New research published by the journal Nature points to the discovery that a single hormone causes nausea and vomiting in pregnancy: GDF15. Researchers found that the amount of this hormone in a pregnant person’s bloodstream before and during pregnancy determines the severity of the nausea and vomiting. GDF15 is released by the body in response to stress, with the receptors of this hormone rooted in the part of the brain responsible for triggering vomiting."

Trials are already underway - with really good hope for effective treatment and prevention. #Health

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Threads is starting its initial real fediverse integration (as it launches into the EU). Exciting times. #Technology

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I've been thinking a lot about leveling engineers lately, and I like this system that Sarah Milstein implemented at Daily very much indeed.

Sarah's just started a coaching practice for engineering leaders, which sounds wonderful to me. #Technology

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This hits the nail on the head:

"No one chasing money in media ever chased Twitter. But anyone chasing power found themselves irresistibly drawn to the platform. And eventually, the platform started to actually deliver that power in ways that continue to reverberate around the world."

I do bristle at the use of Trump and Bernie Sanders as equivalent extremes presented here: one is a fascist demagogue who threatens to undermine American (and perhaps global) democracy, and the other would like people to have healthcare and not die from poverty.

Still, this is why Twitter was important, why it's being missed, and why it was important that it eventually died (albeit not in the way that it actually did). It was about power and influence, wrapped in a dangerous context collapse.

I believe conversation should be democratized: anyone should be able to message the President, or the CEO of Apple, or whichever person is normally behind layers of security and PR and plexiglass. But perhaps not for the benefit of someone else's company, and not in a way that is so fundamentally against the public interest. #Media

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It's reassuring to see Benedict Evans have a lot of the same business questions as everybody else about AI - What actually is this? What will it look like? Will OpenAI be a gatekeeper? Albeit no mention of the ethical issues that are also a hugely important part of understanding the space.

I also found it helpful to see AI hype measured against crypto hype, which reveals how different they actually are.

And, finally, the "everything else" portion is also fascinating, not least because it reveals (through an e-commerce) that most peoples' lives have returned to normal after the covid lockdowns. #Technology

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Really good to hear about this meeting at Meta about joining the fediverse. It sounds like development is continuing apace; I really appreciate the transparency.

I have to admit that I feel a pang of FOMO. This is such an important movement and moment in time for the web. #Technology

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An interesting breakdown not just for people interested in Mastodon - but for anyone who cares about safety on any community platform.

These kinds of prompts turn out to be really useful, with measurable impacts, if they're done right. It's great that an open source project is doing this in the open; we can all learn from what happens next. #Technology

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"The United States has long lagged when it comes to pregnancy-related health. There is a unique danger to pregnancy for Black Americans, who face higher mortality and morbidity rates because of entrenched, systemic racism."

An important series of articles examining what pregnancy looks like in modern-day America - particularly in places where reproductive health rights have been removed, and where outcomes and care are not what they should be.

The American healthcare system is fucked, and it's worse for women, people of color, and LGBT Americans. It's important to throw a spotlight onto the lived experiences of the people who experience the brunt of this. #Health

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No surprise that Black consumers favor local papers that are more reflective of their communities (vs national outlets, which still skew white and male).

"Black news organizations — and also Black reporters at mainstream outlets — understand the local issues better and are less likely to engage in tired tropes and racist stereotypes than national journalists."

One of the most important things we can do to foster trust in media is to hire diverse newsrooms that are more representative of the communities we serve. Surely that's obvious? And yet, journalism as a whole still suffers from the same old diversity issues. #Media

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This is something, but it would be nice to see real ActivityPub support in a way that would allow Spoutible profiles to be first-class profiles on the fediverse.

Still, the nice thing about building in support for Mastodon and BlueSky is that - unlike when I built support for Twitter et al into Known years ago - the networks physically can't shut off or charge for the APIs.

Open networks allow for integration like this without incurring deep supplier risk, as well as much deeper integrations that plug users directly into the networks. All for free.

I'm looking forward to Threads joining the party, too. #Technology

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"The National Labor Relations Board issued a complaint Tuesday alleging Mozilla refused to hire Scarlett because of her past labor activism. The agency’s prosecutors called on Mozilla to offer Scarlett the position she applied for in 2021 or a similar role, and to otherwise make her whole for damages as a result of not being hired."

Whatever the outcome of this complaint, there is effective blacklisting in tech. I sincerely hope that people continue to speak out and organize. #Labor

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This data was widely cited and used to justify some frankly racist rhetoric. I particularly noticed it in the usual circles who complain about the decline of San Francisco supposedly due to progressive policies.

It speaks to the power of data to tell stories, and to peoples' willingness to trust it as infallible and objective when, like every other storytelling medium, it carries underlying biases and context.

It never rang true, and I'm glad this is coming to light. #Society

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Some of the worst humans on the planet, crediting a third worst human on the planet for paving the way for their noxious ideology.

"Now everyone’s a white identitarian. Maybe not fully, but certainly it’s far more acceptable in the conversation — even the word white — than it was years ago." #Society

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Nobody should need to prepare for a mass shooting. Nonetheless, across the country, many children do. That the police at Uvalde were less prepared than an eight year old is a travesty. #Society

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Bruce Schneier on the inevitable application of AI to mass surveillance:

"Knowing that they are under constant surveillance changes how people behave. They conform. They self-censor, with the chilling effects that brings. Surveillance facilitates social control, and spying will only make this worse. Governments around the world already use mass surveillance; they will engage in mass spying as well."

I find this argument that AI can enable mass summarization and classification, and therefore more effective use of surveillance data at scale, very compelling. If governments can do something, as a general rule, they will. And this feels like something that is definitely coming down the pipe. #AI

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"Harvard University dismantled its prestigious team of online disinformation experts after a foundation run by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan donated $500 million to the university, a whistleblower disclosure filed by Whistleblower Aid reveals."

If this is true, it's damning: essentially a payment to shut down academic investigation into harm caused by Facebook. There should be a firewall between research and payments like this; no donor should ever have the ability to shut down a line of research. #Technology

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I see myself very clearly in this post, which is a somewhat rare and lovely thing.

I've called myself a technologist for over a decade, but the definition in this post is better than anything I've offered. Thank you, Robin.

Also, this:

"The past few decades have been stormy from a technological point of view, and much has been tossed about in the waves. It makes sense that a job specialising in plotting a course through technology would become necessary. The storm isn't over. If you want to actively navigate rather than just be pushed around by the wind, a technologist is what you need." #Technology

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Well, of course. Brexit was a massive own goal at the hands of regressive nationalism.

As a European citizen who grew up in the UK, I took the Brexit vote very personally. Not being able to legally live in the place you used to call home is very hard (although I'm fully aware that many people around the world have experienced a much harsher version of this story). I would very strongly welcome a reversal.

Britain's current Labour Party is next to useless, unfortunately, choosing centrist politics over offering a real alternative. I don't know that they'd be bold enough to make this correction under their current leadership. But maybe? #Democracy

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Duke University Libraries says "no" to 37 Signals based on DHH's blog posts:

"When we enter into business with a company whose boss takes delight in the mass layoffs of tech workers because it disempowers those who might speak out against their company keeping a list of non-Anglophone names that some members of the team find hilarious, we have a decent sense of who we’re dealing with."

This move away from Basecamp on ideological grounds is, I think, something to be applauded. I'd love to see more of these kinds of public statements. Because the more of them there are, the less likely a company is to embrace the kind of racist libertarianism that 37 Signals has been so proud to broadcast. #Technology

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Spoiler alert: no. This concept been tried before, more than once, and will fail again. Jim McKelvey seems to understand why advertising is broken - but not necessarily how to align users and publishers.

This quote from a publisher says it all for me: “Honestly, I’m not that invested in knowledge about what he’s doing. I’ve seen the pitch and most everyone says the same thing: ‘He’s a bit arrogant. He’s been very successful.’ It costs nothing to say ‘sure, go ahead,’ and if it works, we’ll most likely be in.'”

And this one: “To be honest, we do not know enough about the tech integration to know how it will work. At this time, we are signed up for the test and will participate.” #Media

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If Elon Musk seems to be acting more like a politician than a businessman, then I think it has to be on purpose. This was an awkward exchange that played to an audience on X rather than the one that was in the room.

X is not a business in any real sense. He is losing revenue dollars hand over fist, seemingly in search for clout from a particular set of people.

And it goes without saying that the views he's spreading are noxious: right-wing, exclusionary, knee-jerk, and often at odds with inclusive causes. It's perfectly possible that he's just letting an unstable mental state play out in public. Or he's just become a right-wing wingnut in the Trumpian tradition. Regardless of the underlying cause, he's doing a lot of damage. #Technology

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