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Note: This was originally published as the online newsletter for the Columbia Journalism Review, where I am the chief digital writer

Last Friday, David Amess, a 69-year-old British member of parliament, was stabbed to death while hosting an open house for his constituents at a church in Leigh-on-Sea, a town in southeastern England. A 25-year-old man was later arrested and charged with his murder. In the aftermath of the incident, a British politician asked for an amendment to the country’s Online Safety Bill—a proposed law that has been making its way through the British legislative process for several years—that he called “David’s Law,” which would bring an end to online anonymity by forcing users of social platforms and other services to reveal their real identities. These calls were surprising to some, since Amess’s death doesn’t appear to have anything to do with online anonymity, or even the internet (at least not yet). The man arrested, Ali Harbi Ali, is the London-born son of an advisor to the former prime minister of Somali and appears to have links to Islamic terrorism, according to a report from British police.

The fact that Amess’s murder has inflamed the debate about digital anonymity despite having no apparent connection to it is evidence of how charged the discussion about online safety has become in the UK, observers say. Mark Francois, a former defense minister and a close friend of the deceased MP, said he wanted to name an amendment to the Online Safety Bill after Amess because his former colleague had become “increasingly concerned” about what he called the “toxic environment” online, and the amount of abuse directed at British politicians, especially women. “If the social media companies don’t want to help us drain the Twitter swamp, then let’s compel them to do it by law,” Francois said on Monday, during a triibute to Amess in the House of Commons. “Let’s put, if I may be so presumptuous, David’s Law onto the statute book.” Francois said the chief executives of Facebook and Twitter should be called to appear before Britain’s parliament “if necessary kicking and screaming.”

Francois’s call for an end to anonymity seemed to get some traction with at least one of the main architects of the Online Safety Bill. Damian Collins, a British MP and chairman of a parliamentary committee looking at the law, said he believes there is a “strong case” for requiring Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms to record the real identities of users, so that those who engage in abuse online could be identified. “People would then understand that if they post abusive material, they could be traced back, even if they posted under an assumed name,” he told Britain’s Telegraph newspaper. Calls for action around online civility and harassment gained traction earlier this year in the wake of racist abuse on Twitter and Instagram directed at several Black members of the British soccer team because of their performance during the Euro 2020 final.

Continue reading “British MP’s death intensifies calls for end to online anonymity”

A classic e.e. cummings poem that seems strangely appropriate in these times of rabid nationalism and terrible deeds done in the name of patriotism — originally written by cummings in 1931, based on a prisoner of conscience he met:

i sing of Olaf glad and big
whose warmest heart recoiled at war:
a conscientious object-or

his wellbelovéd colonel(trig
westpointer most succinctly bred)
took erring Olaf soon in hand;
but–though an host of overjoyed
noncoms(first knocking on the head
him)do through icy waters roll
that helplessness which others stroke
with brushes recently employed
anent this muddy toiletbowl,
while kindred intellects evoke
allegiance per blunt instruments–
Olaf(being to all intents
a corpse and wanting any rag
upon what God unto him gave)
responds,without getting annoyed
“I will not kiss your fucking flag”

Continue reading “I sing of Olaf, glad and big”

“More than anyone else, John von Neumann created the future. He was an unparalleled genius, one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century, and he helped invent the world as we now know it. He came up with a blueprint of the modern computer and sparked the beginnings of artificial intelligence. He worked on the atom bomb and led the team that produced the first computerised weather forecast. In the mid-1950s, he proposed the idea that the Earth was warming as a consequence of humans burning coal and oil, and warned that ‘extensive human intervention’ could wreak havoc with the world’s climate. Colleagues who knew both von Neumann and his colleague Albert Einstein said that von Neumann had by far the sharper mind.” via The Spectator

The Illa de la Discòrdia or Mansana de la Discòrdia — which translates as “Block of Discord” — is a city block in the Eixample district of Barcelona, in Spain. The block is famous for having buildings designed by four of the city’s most important modern architects: Lluís Domènech i Montaner, Antoni Gaudí, Josep Puig i Cadafalch and Enric Sagnier, right next door to each other. As the four architects’ styles were very different, the buildings clash with each other and the neighboring buildings.

This Twitter thread is a persuasive argument that most — if not all — of the important parts of European civilization are built on ham and cheese, and that includes books, which were originally printed on vellum, a material made from the skin of young male sheep and cows (females being too valuable for breeding). Hardback books were invented because vellum tended to buckle and ripple, so boards were sewn into the cover to keep them straight. Furthermore, books also were built on snails.

Ultimately, the hardback book exists because of cheese. 4/ pic.twitter.com/AuyTDEXRTb

— Incunabula (@incunabula) September 6, 2021

If you’ve ever heard of “the Whilhelm Scream” — an audio file of a man screaming, which has been used in literally thousands of movies and TV shows — this prop, with its blinking neon light tubes, could be the physical equivalent. It has appeared in dozens of science-fiction TV shows and terrible movies, and has become such a ubiquitous player in various versions of Star Trek that it should have its own trailer by now. According to a comment on this YouTube clip — which is part one of a three-part series — Modern Props owner John Zabrucky designed it, and it dates to about 1977 or so, but was updated several times.

One great thing about fall is it’s a chance to post this timeless classic from McSweeney’s Internet Tendency — “It’s Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers”

“I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to get my hands on some fucking gourds and arrange them in a horn-shaped basket on my dining room table. That shit is going to look so seasonal. I’m about to head up to the attic right now to find that wicker fucker, dust it off, and jam it with an insanely ornate assortment of shellacked vegetables. When my guests come over it’s gonna be like, BLAMMO! Check out my shellacked decorative vegetables, assholes. Guess what season it is — fucking fall. There’s a nip in the air and my house is full of mutant fucking squash.”

In September of 2014, Tom Maxwell moved with his family into a large, historic home in Hillsborough, North Carolina. With its affordable rent and lush surroundings, it seemed too good to be true. Nine months later, they broke their lease, loaded up the truck, and ran away as fast as they could from the spirits and apparitions that had tortured them. Only afterward would Maxwell learn about the 300 years of bad mojo that had piled up in the house they called Nannie.

“The old and sturdy house, set on rolling pastureland alongside a placid river, appeared safe and calm. It was not. Nannie, and the land around her, was thoroughly haunted. In less than a year we would break the lease, perform a binding ritual, and leave.

As the nature and intensity of the hauntings increased, an elongate man appeared downstairs, almost two-dimensional in his flatness. He would peep at you from around corners or through doorways, just inside your peripheral vision. When you looked at him, he would flash a toothy smile, flatten into the wall and vanish. Scratches appeared on Brooke’s back several times, before my eyes, as we showered.

A hooded thing with long, thin arms began standing over Brooke as she slept. We discussed the possibility of night-hag syndrome, a particularly unpleasant type of sleep paralysis. Whatever it was, it was recurring and utterly terrifying. We had a list of nicknames for our tormentors: Smokey, Spaghetti Arms, The Spook Parade, Bonnet Lady, Smiley, Buckskin Man, Kitchen Lady, The Upstairs Thing.”

In this new apartment complex in Harlem, some experimental apartments are fitted with a structural system designed by former Apple and Tesla engineers, which hides most of the resident’s belongings — including their bed — in the ceiling. Drawers filled with clothing and other articles drop down on command, using a smartphone, and according to the designers the app remembers where the owner put all of their clothing, so a user can request a certain hat or sweater and the system will bring down that drawer. Not a bad way of making a 500-square-foot apartment seem a lot larger!

Note: This was originally published as the daily newsletter at the Columbia Journalism Review, where I am the chief digital writer

Last week, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen testified before a Senate subcommittee about the company’s propensity for disregarding its own research into the harms done by its content algorithms, particularly among young girls who use Instagram, its photo-sharing site. One of the solutions that Haugen recommended is something a number of other Facebook critics have also proposed over the past several years: regulatory oversight that would impose standards of behavior on the social network (and presumably other social networks such as Twitter and YouTube) in an attempt to minimize their various harms. “Right now, the only people in the world who are trained to … understand what’s happening inside of Facebook, are people who grew up inside of Facebook or Pinterest or another social media company,” Haugen told the Senate subcommittee on **. She said the company’s profit motive was so strong that Facebook would not change unless it was subjected to pressure from a government regulator. “Until incentives change at Facebook, we should not expect Facebook to change,” she said. “We need action from Congress.”

There are plenty of critics of this idea, but there’s also one somewhat surprising supporter: Facebook. In a March, 2019 op-ed in the Washington Post, Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, argued that government regulation is necessary and that he welcomes it: “Every day, we make decisions about what speech is harmful, what constitutes political advertising, and how to prevent sophisticated cyberattacks,” he wrote. “But if we were starting from scratch, we wouldn’t ask companies to make these judgments alone. “I believe we need a more active role for governments and regulators.” Among other things, Zuckerberg said he agreed with the need for a data protection law similar to Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation. “I believe it would be good for the Internet if more countries adopted regulation such as GDPR as a common framework,” he wrote.

Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president for global affairs, reiterated this line of argument in interviews following Haugen’s 60 Minutes interview. The algorithms the company uses “should be held to account, if necessary by regulation so that people can match what our systems say they’re supposed to do from what actually happens,” Clegg said on CNN. He also said the company is open to amending Section 230 of the Communictions Decency Act, which protects platforms from liability for what their users post. “We’re not saying this is a substitution of our own responsibilities,” Clegg told NBC, “but there are a whole bunch of things that only regulators and lawmakers can do. I don’t think anyone wants a private company to adjudicate on these difficult trade-offs between free expression on one hand and moderating or removing content on the other. Only lawmakers can create a digital regulator.”

Continue reading “Facebook hearing sparks talk of a social media regulator”

Note: This was originally published as the daily newsletter for the Columbia Journalism Review, where I am the chief digital writer

Several weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal published a series of six investigative news stories about Facebook, alleging a pattern of questionable behavior on the part of both the social network and its photo-sharing service, Instagram. One alleged that changes to the Facebook news feed algorithm, which were purportedly designed to improve the news-reading experience, actually had the opposite effect, and “turned it into an angrier place.” Another said that the company knew about the negative effects its Instagram service was having on the mental health of young girls, because researchers working at Facebook had repeatedly mentioned it during briefings with senior executives, but Facebok took little or no action. Other Journal stories revealed a little-known feature that allowed celebrities to avoid responsibility for breaching Facebook’s rules, and claimed that the company knew its services were being used by drug cartels and human trafficking networks, but routinely failed to do anything to stop it (Facebook responded that the stories are inaccurate and that it cares deeply about the effect its products have on users, including young girls).

The Journal reports were all based on what the paper called “an extensive array of internal company communications” given to it by a whistleblower, a former Facebook staffer who copied the documents before they quit working for the company because they disagreed with its behavior. On Sunday, the whistleblower revealed herself on 60 Minutes to be Frances Haugen, a former product manager at Facebook who has also worked for Google, Pinterest, Yelp, and a number of other technology companies. On Tuesday, Haugen testified before the Senate Commerce subcommittee on consumer protection, product safety, and data security about the potential dangers of Instagram for young users (Haugen also posted her testimony to her personal website). In both her 60 Minutes interview and her congressional testimony, Haugen made the same central point: that Facebook knew about the dangers of the recommendation algorithms that power it and Instagram, but chose to do nothing. It knew about these dangers, Haugen said, because the company’s own researchers had mentioned them repeatedly in multiple research papers.

“The company’s leadership knows how to make Facebook and Instagram safer but won’t make the necessary changes because they have put their astronomical profits before people,” Haugen said during her testimony to the senate committee. The bottom line, she said, is that Congress must take action, comparing Facebook to other industries that also wound up being regulated by the government in order to protect consumers from harm, such as tobacco companies and car makers. One of the big challenges with Facebook, she argued, is that legislators don’t have any idea how the company’s products work, because it is so reluctant to either share data from its own internal research, or provide data to outside scientists. “This inability to see into Facebook’s actual systems and confirm they work as communicated is like the Department of Transportation regulating cars by only watching them drive down the highway,” Haugen told the senate committee.

Continue reading “Whistleblower turns up the heat on Facebook and Instagram”