Notes From An Emergency

An Apology for the Internet — From the People Who Built It

A hand-wringing, finger-pointing litany of hindsight, published with 11 tracking scripts attached.

1. Start With Hippie Good Intentions …
2. … Then mix in capitalism on steroids.
3. The arrival of Wall Streeters didn’t help …
4. … And we paid a high price for keeping it free.
5. Everything was designed to be really, really addictive.
6. At first, it worked — almost too well.
7. No one from Silicon Valley was held accountable …
8. … Even as social networks became dangerous and toxic.
9. … And even as they invaded our privacy.
10. Then came 2016.
11. Employees are starting to revolt.
12. To fix it, we’ll need a new business model …
13. … And some tough regulation.
14. Maybe nothing will change.
15. … Unless, at the very least, some new people are in charge.

Twitter and Tear Gas by Zeynep Tufekci

There’s a free Creative Commons licensed PDF of this vital book available online.

A riveting firsthand account and incisive analysis of modern protest, revealing internet-fueled social movements’ greatest strengths and frequent challenges.

Build a Better Monster: Morality, Machine Learning, and Mass Surveillance

So what happens when these tools for maximizing clicks and engagement creep into the political sphere?

This is a delicate question! If you concede that they work just as well for politics as for commerce, you’re inviting government oversight. If you claim they don’t work well at all, you’re telling advertisers they’re wasting their money.

Facebook and Google have tied themselves into pretzels over this.

Scripting News: The Internet is going the wrong way

The Internet is a place for the people, like parks, libraries, museums, historic places. It’s okay if corporations want to exploit the net, like DisneyLand or cruise lines, but not at the expense of the natural features of the net.

André Staltz - The Web began dying in 2014, here’s how

This is the clickbaitiest of titles, but the post has some good sobering analysis of how much traffic driven by a small handful players. It probably won’t make you feel very cheery about the future.

(For some reason, this article uses all-caps abbreviations for company names, as though a stock ticker started generating hot takes: GOOG, FB, AMZN, etc. It’s a very odd writing style for a human.)