Werd I/O

[Mark Lemley on LinkedIn]

Meta's lawyer in its AI case has fired them as a client, and is not beating around the bush as to why:

"I have struggled with how to respond to Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook's descent into toxic masculinity and Neo-Nazi madness. While I have thought about quitting Facebook, I find great value in the connections and friends I have here, and it doesn't seem fair that I should lose that because Zuckerberg is having a mid-life crisis.

[...] I have deactivated my Threads account. Bluesky is an outstanding alternative to Twitter, and the last thing I need is to support a Twitter-like site run by a Musk wannabe."

I wish I could read a response from Zuckerberg himself. I suspect none will be forthcoming.

#Technology

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[Andrew J. Hawkins at The Verge]

I think this is the wrong kind of protectionism:

"The Biden administration finalized a new rule that would effectively ban all Chinese vehicles from the US under the auspices of blocking the “sale or import” of connected vehicle software from “countries of concern.” The rule could have wide-ranging effects on big automakers, like Ford and GM, as well as smaller manufacturers like Polestar — and even companies that don’t produce cars, like Waymo."

I would much rather see a ban on vehicles that spy on you, regardless of who manufactures them. The rule as it stands provides very uneven protection, and allows domestic vehicle manufacturers to conduct significant surveillance over their customers. Legislators should just ban the practice outright, and conduct inspections to ensure that it's the case across the board.

#Technology

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[Mike Masnick in TechDirt]

Mark Zuckerberg is very obviously running scared from the incoming Trump administration:

"Since the election, Zuckerberg has done everything he can possibly think of to kiss the Trump ring. He even flew all the way from his compound in Hawaii to have dinner at Mar-A-Lago with Trump, before turning around and flying right back to Hawaii. In the last few days, he also had GOP-whisperer Joel Kaplan replace Nick Clegg as the company’s head of global policy. On Monday it was announced that Zuckerberg had also appointed Dana White to Meta’s board. White is the CEO of UFC, but also (perhaps more importantly) a close friend of Trump’s."

He then announced a new set of moderation changes.

As Mike Masnick notes here, Facebook's moderation was terrible and has always been terrible. It tried to use AI to improve its moderation at scale, with predictable results. It simply hasn't worked, and that's often harmed vulnerable communities and voices in the process. So it makes sense to take a different approach.

But Zuckerberg is trying to paint these changes as being pro free speech, and that doesn't ring true. For example, trying to paint fact-checking as censorship is beyond stupid:

"Of course, bad faith actors, particularly on the right, have long tried to paint fact-checking as “censorship.” But this talking point, which we’ve debunked before, is utter nonsense. Fact-checking is the epitome of “more speech”— exactly what the marketplace of ideas demands. By caving to those who want to silence fact-checkers, Meta is revealing how hollow its free speech rhetoric really is."

This is all of a piece with Zuckerberg's rolling back of much-needed DEI programs and his suggestion that most companies need more masculine energy. It's for show to please a permatanned audience of one and avoid existential threats to his business.

I would love to read the inside story in a few years. For now, we've just got to accept that everything being incredibly dumb is all part of living in 2025.

#Technology

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[Rae Morey at The Repository]

The bananas activity continues over at Automattic / Matt Mullenweg's house:

"Members of the fledgling WordPress Sustainability Team have been left reeling after WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg abruptly dissolved the team this week.

[...] The disbandment happened after team rep Thijs Buijs announced in Making WordPress Slack on Wednesday that he was stepping down from his role, citing a Reddit thread Mullenweg created on Christmas Eve asking for suggestions to create WordPress drama in 2025."

Meanwhile, a day earlier, Automattic announced that it will ramp down its own contributions to WordPress:

"To recalibrate and ensure our efforts are as impactful as possible, Automattic will reduce its sponsored contributions to the WordPress project. This is not a step we take lightly. It is a moment to regroup, rethink, and strategically plan how Automatticians can continue contributing in ways that secure the future of WordPress for generations to come. Automatticians who contributed to core will instead focus on for-profit projects within Automattic, such as WordPress.com, Pressable, WPVIP, Jetpack, and WooCommerce. Members of the “community” have said that working on these sorts of things should count as a contribution to WordPress."

This is a genuinely odd thing to do. Yes, it's true that Automattic is at a disadvantage in the sense that it contributes far more to the open source project than other private companies. Free riders have long been a problem for open source innovators. But it's also why the company exists. I have questions about the balance of open source vs proprietary code in Automattic's future offerings. That's important because WordPress is the core value of its products and the open source core guarantees freedom from lock-in.

Is there a proprietary CMS coming down the wire? Is this bizarre board activity behind the scenes? Is something else going on? This whole situation still feels to me like there's another shoe ready to drop - and the longer it goes on, the bigger that shoe seems to be. I hope they don't completely squander the trust and value they've been building for decades.

#Technology

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[Jason Kottke]

Jason nails what the supposed focus on free speech by Meta and others is really about:

"What Zuckerberg and Meta have realized is the value, demonstrated by Trump, Musk, and MAGA antagonists, of saying that you’re “protecting free speech” and using it as cover for almost anything you want to do. For Meta, that means increasing engagement, decreasing government oversight and interference, and lowering their labor costs (through cutting their workforce and strengthening their bargaining position vs labor) — all things that will make their stock price go up and increase the wealth of their shareholders."

It's a grift, pure and simple. One that happens to help them curry favor with the incoming President and his fan-base.

#Technology

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[Alex Weprin at The Hollywood Reporter]

I don't think this is a great thing at all:

"Meta will also move its trust and safety and content moderation teams out of California, with content review to be based in Texas. “As we work to promote free expression, I think that will help us build trust to do this work in places where there is less concern about the bias of our teams,” Zuckerberg said."

Its lack of effective moderation previously led to aiding and abetting an actual genocide in Myanmar; there's a reason why trust and safety on large online platforms evolved in the way it did. The idea that Texas is somehow a politically-neutral place to run these teams from is also completely laughable.

A funny thing about cries about censorship on social platforms is that they all seem to relate to people wanting to be abusive to vulnerable people who are already systemically oppressed. I guess we're allowing more of that now. This really is a new era of prosperity!

Of course, this is a move to placate the incoming President, which is likely just one of many. It's, in many ways, pathetic to see. It's just business, they'll shrug and tell you. Well, just business and peoples' lives.

#Technology

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[Ryan Barrett]

Ryan Barrett takes Stewart Brand's Pace Layering and adapts it to model technology progress:

"I’ve been a fan of Stewart Brand‘s Pace Layering for decades now. Really great framework for thinking about how different ecosystems and emergent forces interact. I’ve been thinking about a tech version of it for the better part of a year, and I finally took advantage of the holiday break to bang out a rough draft. Thoughts?"

My thoughts are that this is helpful. It's also a good way to think about where you want to be in the stack as a person: product is this kind of messy, unstable squiggle of a progress line, whereas the underlying CS, standards, and components provide relative stability. It's as much of a guide to where to orient your tech career as it is to how the whole system works.

#Technology

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[Thanos Pappas at CarScoops]

There are a few different levels to this story about the VW Group's terrible cybersecurity:

"According to a new report from Germany, the VW Group stored sensitive information for 800,000 electric vehicles from various brands on a poorly secured and misconfigured Amazon cloud storage system—essentially leaving the digital door wide open for anyone to waltz in. And not just briefly, but for months on end."

Much of this data was precise location information for hundreds of thousands of vehicles - all stored in a misconfigured S3 bucket.

So, obviously, it's incredibly damning that a company the size of VW left its sensitive data on an S3 bucket in this way. But it's not great - at all - that the company was storing this information at all.

One of the challenges of modern cars (this issue isn't limited to EVs) is that they're fully connected and phone home to their manufacturers. It isn't just VW that keeps track of the locations of the vehicles it makes; it's every car manufacturer. If there's a connectivity option for the car, the car is being tracked.

This data can be used in all kinds of ways: for example, it could be used as an additional revenue stream by selling it to data brokers, whose customers could use it for use cases that run the gamut from ad targeting to law enforcement.

The headline here is provocative, but the impact of these sorts of disclosures isn't limited to people who travel to brothels. Activists, politicians, and journalists are three more groups who are at risk from always-on tracking. And one can imagine this kind of data being used to demonstrate that someone drove to get reproductive healthcare, for example.

Nobody should be able to obtain this level of personal tracking about any private person. That it was accidentally released on an S3 bucket is almost incidental.

#Technology

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[OpenStreetMap]

Meta has contributed 178,710 Euros (an oddly specific number!) to OpenStreetMap.

On one level: hooray for people contributing to open source.

On another: Meta has a $1.5 Trillion market cap and uses OpenStreetMap in multiple applications. To be fair, it also provides direct non-monetary contributions, but regardless, when all is said and done, it's a bargain. Arguably, the open source project deserves much more. And it's really sad that a donation at this level from a major beneficiary of the project is so exciting that it merits a blog post.

#Technology

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[Ernie Smith at Tedium]

Is the ongoing Matt Mullenweg / Automattic / WP Engine drama really about private equity undermining the open source WordPress project? In his summary of the latest developments, Ernie doesn't think so:

"But I don’t think that’s really what’s been happening here. I think the concern, if we’re really being honest, reflects frustration that Mullenweg has struggled to make Automattic into the firm that WP Engine has become—the first choice for businesses and agencies looking to get a site online. His actions since September—which, mind you, included building a website promoting the number of WP Engine users that had left that platform—have only come to underline that. And despite his claims otherwise, his actions have clearly spoken in the other direction."

I still think there's another shoe here. I've published a few times about this saga, and each time I've heard from people who have been involved in WordPress for a long time who think this is very much in line with Mullenweg's long term behavior and personality. But I still have to wonder if it's not so much him worrying about Automattic's progress in this market as his board and investors. If they're suddenly putting pressure on him to improve results, that in turn would explain why he's being so erratic, and how this appeared to come out of the blue.

I don't know. I don't have any inside here. It's so weird, and so obviously counter-productive. The most recent injunction is the prelude to a full court case; let's see what happens there. I wouldn't like to make predictions.

#Technology

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[Erin Griffith at the New York Times]

I've been using Mozi for a little while and like it quite a bit:

"Mr. Williams views Mozi as an attempt to return to social media’s original intention, which was about interacting with people you already knew. Over the years, social media companies evolved into just plain media — a place for watching videos from influencers and professional entertainers, reading links to news stories, sharing memes or impulse shopping via highly targeted ads. Many of the apps are optimized to get users hooked on an endless scroll of new information."

Here I've got to offer a disclaimer: I used to work with Ev Williams at Medium, and have chatted with him a number of times since leaving that position. I'm also friends with a few people in that circle (who were either involved in early Twitter, early Medium, or both). I like him and think he has good instincts about what the web might be missing for regular people. I also know and like a founder of Dopplr, which apps like this all owe a debt of gratitude to.

For all my hyping of decentralized social media, the underlying tech isn't the thing: it's the use case and the way it builds relationships between people and communities. What I like about Mozi is that it doesn't attempt to horde your engagement or intermediate your relationships: it uses your device's existing (inherently-decentralized) messaging tools and address book to stay in touch but adds a kind of presence layer over the top.

Also, this:

"Consumer apps like Mozi are out of step with the tech zeitgeist, which has centered most recently on artificial intelligence."

Honestly, thank God. And I'm grateful that the team is talking about monetizing through premium features that provide extra value, rather than advertising or selling to data brokers.

In other words: hooray for a good old-fashioned app that tries to behave well and add value.

#Technology

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[Daniel Appelquist and Yves Lafon at the W3C]

These ethical web principles that guide the ongoing development of the platform are great. And this is spot on:

"The web is a fundamental part of our lives, shaping how we work, connect, and learn. We understand that with this profound impact comes the responsibility to ensure that the web serves as a platform that benefits people and delivers positive social outcomes. As we continue to advance the web platform, we must therefore consider the consequences of our work."

I feel like this is missing a statement on inclusivity (beyond "the web is for all people"), but I imagine that might have been difficult or contentious to include.

But in particular, enforcing the web as a platform that does not lead to societal harm, supports privacy and freedom of expression, and enhances individuals' control and power feels like an important statement. Particularly right now.

I guess my question is: how does this come into play in practice in the day-to-day work of the W3C? How does the W3C intend to seed these ideas outside of its walls? Those practical considerations feel important, too.

#Technology

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[Emma Roth at The Verge]

I think this was almost inevitable:

"On Tuesday, a California District Court judge ordered Automattic to stop blocking WP Engine’s access to WordPress.org resources and interfering with its plugins."

Automattic is going to file a counterclaim, pointing out that the ruling was made without the benefit of discovery and without what it believes are the full set of facts. It believes it can still win in a full trial.

I still think there's more to this story than meets the eye. Either Matt Mullenweg was responding to some kind of outside pressure (for example, from his investors and board), or he basically went nuts. It could be a little from column A and a little from column B. It's even possible that there's some bombshell revelation forthcoming about WP Engine (although I have to say it's quite an outside chance). But I wish we could scratch the surface and go deeper. Maybe one day we'll learn more.

#Technology

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[Lindsey Lionheart O'Brien at Mozilla Distilled]

This is a rebrand and reorientation for Mozilla:

"Mozilla isn’t just another tech company — we’re a global crew of activists, technologists and builders, all working to keep the internet free, open and accessible. For over 25 years, we’ve championed the idea that the web should be for everyone, no matter who you are or where you’re from. Now, with a brand refresh, we’re looking ahead to the next 25 years (and beyond), building on our work and developing new tools to give more people the control to shape their online experiences."

As I've argued in the past, Mozilla is best placed to support other peoples' work. I wrote last month:

"I believe Mozilla is best placed to achieve this goal by explicitly fostering an ecosystem of open, accessible software that promotes user independence, privacy, and safety. It should be a facilitator, supporter, and convener through which projects that promote these values thrive."

This seems to be a part of this refocused mission (and a continuation of a statement of intention that dates from 2023). As Lindsey Lionheart O'Brien writes in this update:

"We back people and projects that move technology, the internet and AI in the right direction. In a time of privacy breaches, AI challenges and misinformation, this transformation is all about rallying people to take back control of their time, individual expression, privacy, community and sense of wonder."

Who can argue with that? We need help, and if Mozilla is serious about this mission, I'm all for it. We just need to hold them to it.

#Technology

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[Mathew Ingram]

As Mathew Ingram points out, Australia's new social media law is a well-intentioned error.

He quotes an Australian human rights commission dissent which points out that:

"For children in marginalised, remote, or vulnerable situations, social media offers a lifeline. It connects children with disability to peers, resources, and communities they may not otherwise access. It helps LGBTQIA+ youth find acceptance and solidarity. It can improve access to healthcare, particularly for children seeking mental health support."

This and: the harms may be overstated. Is social media leading teens to harm, or is it giving vulnerable teens a voice? The answer may be more complicated than some of the advocates who led to the ban might believe.

Other experts agree that the risks may outweigh the benefits, isolating lonely kids from help and community that they might otherwise receive. While well-intentioned, that seems like a bad thing to do.

#Technology

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[Joseph Cox at 404 Media]

This is good to see:

"The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced sweeping action against some of the most important companies in the location data industry on Tuesday, including those that power surveillance tools used by a wide spread of U.S. law enforcement agencies and demanding they delete data related to certain sensitive areas like health clinics and places of worship."

Gravy and its subsidiary Venntel are two of the largest companies used to sell location information to law enforcement. The FTC is not banning the practice outright - but it's requiring that information relating to sensitive locations is removed. That includes "medical facilities, religious organizations, correctional facilities, labor union offices, schools and childcare facilities, domestic abuse and homeless support centers, shelters for refugee or immigrant populations, and military installations."

Of course, many other locations not covered by this ban are also sensitive, depending on context, and it would be far better to not sell this information at all. It's also highly likely that other service providers are selling this information under the radar.

Still, it's a start.

#Technology

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[Sam Biddle at The Intercept]

In the face of Trump's promise to conduct mass deportations, The Intercept set out to find out who in tech would be collaborators:

"To see whether corporate America will support Trump’s promised anti-immigrant operation, The Intercept reached out to data and technology companies that hold immense quantities of personal information or sell analytic software useful to an agency like ICE. The list includes obscure data brokers that glean intimate personal details from advertising streams, mainstream cellular phone providers, household-name social networks, predictive policing firms, and more."

Only four companies responded. Of those, two said they would; one said they would not; and the other (Thomson Reuters Clear) hedged with a dodgy answer that suggests the door is open.

#Technology

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[Joel Gascoigne]

I always appreciate Joel's updates.

"Early on, my dream was just to create a tool that made it easy to Tweet consistently, build it for myself and others, and make enough money to cover my living expenses and go full-time on it. The number for me to be able to work on it full-time was £1,200 per month, and that felt almost out of reach in the beginning. Today, Buffer generates $1.65 million per month, serves 59,000 customers, and enables fulfilling work for 72 people."

It's a tool I personally pay for and use every day (although it runs behind the scenes for me, as part of automations I've set up for myself). But even before then, Joel's build in public approach felt meaningful - it resonated as a way I wanted to work and do business, too.

Although there are inevitably sensitive topics that I'm sure Joel hasn't been able to talk about, I've been impressed with this transparency, which has held through good times and bad. It's a model to learn from, and one that also leads to longevity:

"When I really stop to take a step back, I feel very lucky that I've been able to do this for fourteen years. It's a long time in any sense. In tech and social media it feels like almost a lifetime already."

It is. And I love it. Kudos.

#Technology

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[Tyler Fisher]

Tyler Fisher has built a Nuzzel-like service for Bluesky:

"Sill connects to your Bluesky and Mastodon accounts and aggregates the most popular links in your network. (Yes, a little like Nuzzel.)"

It's a personal project for now but there's more to come:

"I built Sill as a passion project, but I'd also like to keep it sustainable, which means making plans for revenue. While I am committed to always keeping the basic Sill web client free, once we exit the public beta period (likely early next year), I plan to launch some paid plans for Sill with additional features."

I've been using it for a while and have found it to be quite useful. If you're a Bluesky user, you can sign up at Sill.social.

#Technology

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[Wes Davis at The Verge]

Interesting announcement from the European Commission:

"The European Union says Twitter alternative Bluesky violates the EU Digital Services Act rules around information disclosure, reports Reuters. But since Bluesky isn’t yet big enough to be considered a “very large online platform” under the DSA, the regulator says it can’t regulate Bluesky the way it does X or Threads."

All platforms doing business in the EU need to have a dedicated page on their website that enumerates how many users they have in the EU. Bluesky isn't big enough for the DSA to actually be enforceable yet, but this raises interesting questions about how they would do this - or how any decentralized system would go about this. Will Bluesky need to start tracking location, or even KYC information? That doesn't seem desirable.

Whereas Bluesky's architecture lends itself to a few big players, led by the Bluesky Social corporation, Mastodon is made up of many, much smaller communities. These individually will never be big enough to be regulated under the DSA. If that model becomes predominant, will it in turn trigger DSA changes that take the fediverse into account? Or I wonder if there can be another path forward where a platform just has to demonstrate that it meets EU data standards for all users, and then doesn't need to track them?

#Technology

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[Dan Milmo at The Guardian]

The Department of Justice has filed its proposed remedies to Google's illegal monopoly over search services:

"The proposals filed to a Washington federal court include the forced sale of the Chrome browser and a five-year ban from entering the browser market; a block on paying third parties such as Apple to make Google the default search engine on their products and divestment of the Android mobile operating system if the initial proposals do not work."

The court also wants everyone to have a way to block their content from being used as AI training data - and for the search index itself to be opened up.

The judge will decide next year. I have to assume there will be intense negotiations about which remedies actually get implemented - and I don't hold out much hope for strong enforcement under the Trump administration (particularly one where Elon Musk and JD Vance are participants). But it's a hint of what strong, capable antitrust enforcement could look like.

#Technology

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[Khadija Alam and Russell Brandom at Rest of World]

Mobile internet subscriber growth is significantly slowing globally:

"From 2015 to 2021, the survey consistently found over 200 million coming online through mobile devices around the world each year. But in the last two years, that number has dropped to 160 million. Rest of World analysis of that data found that a number of developing countries are plateauing in the number of mobile internet subscribers. That suggests that in countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Mexico, the easiest populations to get online have already logged on, and getting the rest of the population on mobile internet will continue to be a challenge."

Many services - Facebook included - were able to grow rapidly by hitching a ride on the growth of the internet itself. It looks like that rapid growth is coming to an end, which will have implications for consumer startups down the line.

It will also fundamentally change the way we relate to the internet. It used to be that the majority of internet users were new: correspondingly, there was a shine to just being connected that overshadowed shortcomings. But we're finding ourselves in an era where most of us have been able to sit with the internet for a while, sometimes for generations. That inevitably leads to a more nuanced relationship with it - and in turn, more detailed thoughts around regulation, policy, and the kinds of applications we want to be using in the long term. That cultural change will be interesting to watch, and likely societally positive - but it will come with some downsides for tech companies and platforms.

#Technology

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[Joanna Chiu and Viola Zhou at Rest of World]

Tech companies like Microsoft and Google have, through their accelerators, supported startups that provide censorship and policing technologies in China. It's perhaps not a surprise that they've supported these endeavors - after all, startups look to find product/market fit in their regions - but it flies in the face of efforts they've made to appear to care about human rights.

I've been thinking about this a lot:

"Support for the companies through their startup incubator programs raises questions about the future of these initiatives, especially as Donald Trump prepares to take a second term as president."

We know that tech companies comply with authoritarian regimes when they try to do business there. There's a long history of that, from IBM colluding with the Nazis through Yahoo giving up the identities of bloggers to the Chinese authorities. What happens when their home turf becomes one? I don't think we can expect anything other than collaboration.

At this point, that's mostly speculation (beyond existing contracts with ICE, say) - but there's no doubt that surveillance and censorship have been used in China to squash dissent and commit human rights abuses. The tech companies who directly fund the infrastructure to do this are complicit, and should be publicly held as such.

#Technology

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[Renee Dudley, with research by Doris Burke, at ProPublica]

Security lapses in Microsoft's own products led to hacks that in turn pushed President Biden to ask for help from it and other tech companies to improve White House security. Microsoft saw it as an opportunity to lock the White House into its products.

Microsoft pledged to give $150M in technical services to the government to upgrade its security. But it wasn't altruistic:

"Microsoft’s seemingly straightforward commitment belied a more complex, profit-driven agenda, a ProPublica investigation has found. The proposal was, in fact, a calculated business maneuver designed to bring in billions of dollars in new revenue, box competitors out of lucrative government contracts and tighten the company’s grip on federal business."

The result may have created an illegal monopoly on government systems - and increased its susceptibility to future Microsoft flaws:

"Competition is not the only issue at stake. As Washington has deepened its relationship with Microsoft, congressional leaders have raised concerns about what they call a cybersecurity “monoculture” in the federal government. Some, like Wyden and Sen. Eric Schmitt, a Republican from Missouri, have blasted the Defense Department in particular for “doubling down on a failed strategy of increasing its dependence on Microsoft.”"

Monocultures are bad. It's hard to see how these kinds of toxic relationships don't get worse over the next four years.

#Technology

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[Sean Goedecke]

This is very good. It's advertised as a piece about shipping in big tech companies, but honestly, I think it's true of many smaller companies too. It's not true in the smallest startups or for organizations with certain kinds of engineering cultures - but I suspect they may be in the minority.

"What does it mean to ship? It does not mean deploying code or even making a feature available to users. Shipping is a social construct within a company. Concretely, that means that a project is shipped when the important people at your company believe it is shipped."

Software engineering isn't a technology business: it's a people business. You're building tools that solve real problems for real people, and you're doing it inside an organizational structure that is also made of real people. There's no way to get around this: unless the organization is exceptionally organized around engineering needs (which many small and medium tech companies are!), you will have to navigate these sorts of interpersonal dynamics.

This hits the nail on the head for just about everybody:

"I think a lot of engineers hold off on deploys essentially out of fear. If you want to ship, you need to do the exact opposite: you need to deploy as much as you can as early as possible, and you need to do the scariest changes as early as you can possibly do them."

It seems counterintuitive, but again: if your goal is to ship (and it probably should be), you need to focus on doing that.

#Technology

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