Not finishing up, or starting up, but up starting.
Hell, we’ve been up and starting for one month short of eighteen years. Across that whole time, we’ve been pushing the idea that free customers are more valuable—to themselves, to sellers, to the whole marketplace—than captive ones.
And I’m more optimistic than ever that we’ll prove that idea in the next few years.
Toward that ambition, here are some links in tabs I’m closing:
- Customer Commons (ProjectVRM’s nonprofit spinoff) has a renewed website. There is still much shaking down to do, but big thanks to Justin Byrd of Machi-Systems for doing the heavy lifting on the project.
- The Future, Present, and Past of News—and Why Archives Anchor It All is a talk I’ll be leading on Thursday, 8 August at DWeb Camp. The VRooMy side of it is leadership news needs from its consumers (who pay nothing) and customers (who do). More context at the News Commons series running on my blog.
- The Personal Stack, 2024 ‘AI Powered’ Version … what needs to be built on the individual side to enable balanced, trustworthy relationships with supply organisations is one among many pure-VRM posts in Iain Henderson’s Substack newsletter.. Jamie Smith’s Customer Futures is another one.
- Don Marti’s blog has too much good stuff for me to list it all. One especially worth pointing out, for Mac and iPhone users, is turn off advertising measurement in Apple Safari. After giving instructions (which I just followed, surprised that I hadn’t turned this shit off), he explains, “The deeper they hide stuff like this, the more it shows they understand that it’s not in your best interest to have it on. The Apple billboards are all about protecting you from tracking. I haven’t seen one yet that was more like
Connect and share with brands you love!
(please let me know if you see any Apple billboards like this) Information has value in a market. When your browser passes information about you—even in a form that is supposed to prevent individual tracking—you’re rewarding risky and problematic advertising practices along with the legit ones. Some advertising has value, but putting legit sites and malvertising on an equal basis for data collection is not helping.” Bonus link concerning Apple’s new AI push. And here are two more bonus links from when Apple first went on its privacy kick: - “Okay, whatever”: An Evaluation of Cookie Consent Interfaces. From 2022, but more relevant than ever.
- $700bn delusion: Does using data to target specific audiences make advertising more effective? Latest studies suggest not, by Jon Bradshaw in Mi3.
- Apps Apple threatens or kills with its new gear and OS generations.
- Google Is the Only Search Engine That Works on Reddit Now Thanks to AI Deal, by Emanuel Maiberg in 404. This is about more silo-ing.
- Dave Winer‘s Podcasto is cool. He got the podcast ball rolling, both on tech and in pods of his own. This features much of his early stuff.
- Recommendations from the High-Level Group on Access to Data for Effective Law Enforcement , which EDRi says was “first published by Netzpolitik and now also made public by the European Commission, was drafted by the “High-Level Group (HLG) on access to data for effective law enforcement,” which was convened following a proposal by the Swedish Presidency of the Council last spring.” It continues, “Building upon previous proposals drafted by police and security officials from Europe and North America, the plan contains 42 separate recommendations, amongst which are calls for the re-introduction of mass telecommunications surveillance (“data retention”) and the undermining of encrypted communication systems.” Bold red type in the Recommendations says, “The opinions expressed are those of the experts only and should not be considered as representative of the European Commission’s official position.” This is good, because the whole idea is awful.
- Ted Gioia’s A 2000-Year-Old Argument Over the Flute Is the Most Important Thing in Our Culture Right Now: This bitter debate from ancient times helps us understand today’s crisis in music and other creative fields unpacks what the head and subhead say. Ted’s is one of the best Substack newsletters.
- Metaphor, Morality, and Politics, Or, Why Conservatives Have Left Liberals In the Dust is a rough outline of George Lakoff‘s landmark 1995 book, Moral Politics: What Conservatives Know that Liberals Don’t, which in its later editions became Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think. If you want to know a big reason why political movements on the right and left succeed, George’s stuff is required reading. Bonus link. On the separate and more current matter of “wokeness,” here’s Lessig.
- Toward Personal AI:
- Internet Computer Protocol (ICP). A blockchain thing. See what you think.
- Rewilding the Web: Europe’s Path to Digital Sovereignty: Is Personal Data Going Dutch? by Arno Otto. I’m sourced in it. Somewhere is stuff I said at Solid World in a video. Can’t find it right now, though.
- The Dutch Data Vault Foundation is a VRM play.
- COSMOPlat “introduces users’ participation in the whole manufacturing process.”
- FEMA’s National Risk Map. Not especially VRooMy, but interesting. Where I am now, Monroe County, Indiana, is “relatively low.”
- George Tannenbaum bails from the advertising industry.
- Internet Kessler Syndrome: Are We Witnessing The Beginning Of The End Of The Open Internet? The risk: “an internet so clogged with ‘debris’ that it loses everything that once made it useful.” A good and depressing read.
- Augustine Fou on how adtech fails.
- A bill to protect people form deepfakes.
- ‘The Foundation For Open Source Ecosystem Technology (FOSET) is centered on Open Source development to better serve the public sector, academic institutions, and non-profit organizations. FOSET acts as a home for the technology, its associated documentation and governance, and the community of individuals and organizations that support it.”
- How Does Your Mobile Phone Track You (Even When Off)? by Danka Delić in ProPrivacy.
- The Hacking of Culture and the Creation of Socio-Technical Debt. by Kim Córdova and Bruce Schneier. Bonus link from Bruce.
- Network Neutrality, Search Neutrality, and the Never-ending Conflict between Efficiency and Fairness in Markets, by Andrew Odlyzko. An oldie but goodie.
That’s it for now.
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