Tag: Internet fiefdoms

Redecentralize the Internet

~ cafebedouin ~ 1 Comment

“Every new medium (read: technology) has four sets of effects, he said, which can be best discovered in answers to four questions:

  1. What does the medium enhance
  2. What does the medium make obsolete?
  3. What does the medium retrieve that had been obsolesced earlier? 
  4. What does the medium reverse, or flip into, when pushed to extremes?”

—McLuhan, Marshall quoted in Searls, Doc. “The Actually Distributed Web.” Linux Journal. August 8, 2017.

Interesting argument that decentralized protocols integrated with blockchains are more efficient than centralized systems and have the potential to undermine the platforms of the major Internet fiefdoms of Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft. I am not sure I believe that this is likely to happen, but it is a refreshing change from the doom and gloom of many technology discussions these days.

Facebook & Facial Recognition 

~ cafebedouin ~ 1 Comment

Tech companies, whose business model is based on collecting data about its users and using it to sell ads, frequently oppose consumer privacy legislation. But privacy advocates say Facebook is uniquely aggressive in opposing all forms of regulation on its technology.

And the strategy has been working. Bills that would have created new consumer data protections for facial recognition were proposed in at least five states this year — Washington, Montana, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Alaska — but all failed, except the Washington bill, which passed only after its scope was limited.

No federal law regulates how companies use biometric privacy or facial recognition, and no lawmaker has ever introduced a bill to do so. That prompted the Government Accountability Office to conclude in 2015 that the “privacy issues that have been raised by facial recognition technology serve as yet another example of the need to adapt federal privacy law to reflect new technologies.” Congress did, however, roll back privacy protections in March by allowing Internet providers to sell browser data without the consumer’s permission.”

—Bennett, Jared. “Saving Face: Facebook Wants Access Without Limits.” The Center for Public Integrity. July 31, 2017.