Category: social media

Your face, your voice, AI, and human rights…

Posted on by The Information Badger in AI & Robotics, Automation, Education, Ethics & Regulation, Information Technology, Legal matters, Online Safety, Privacy and Surveillance, social media

In the gap between completing his undergraduate degree and starting post-graduate study, the Badger took a temporary job as an assistant in a dockyard laboratory performing marine metallurgical failure investigations and associated corrosion research. It was a great few months which enabled the application of what he learned during his undergraduate degree to real world events. Those few months are the reason why, for example, the Badger has a particular interest today in the findings of the investigation into the Titan deep-sea submersible failure. The dockyard lab staff were experts with colourful personalities and diverse opinions on a wide range of topics. Engaging in wide-ranging discussions with them, especially at lunchtime in the canteen, was enlightening, thought-provoking, and has been the source of fond memories lasting for years.

One particular memory is of one senior expert, highly respected but always cantankerous and quarrelsome, refusing to be photographed sitting at their electron microscope for a newspaper feature about the laboratory. They didn’t want their image captured and used because, they claimed, it was part of ‘who they were as an individual’ and therefore it was part of their human rights to own and control its use. The lab boss saw things differently, and for days there was a lot of philosophical discussion amongst staff about the expert’s position. The newspaper feature ultimately used a photo of the electron microscope by itself.

The current strike by Hollywood actors, due in part to proposals relating to AI and the use of an actor’s image and voice, brought the memory of the lab expert’s stance regarding their image to the fore. In those days, the law was more straightforward because the internet, social media, personal computers, smart phones, and artificial intelligence didn’t exist. In today’s world, however, images of a person and their voice are routinely captured, shared, and manipulated, often for commercial gain without an individual’s real awareness. The law has, of course, developed – all be it slowly – since the expert’s days at the lab, but the surge in AI in its various guises over the last year seems to illustrate that the gap between legal/regulatory controls and the digital world continues to widen.    

Today, and with advancing AI, an image of you or snippet of your voice can be manipulated for any purpose, good or evil. Whilst there’s some teaching of online safety at school, is it enough? Does it sufficiently raise awareness about protecting ‘your image and your voice which are both key attributes that characterise who you are as a person’? Did the dockyard lab expert have a point, all those years ago, in asserting that it was part of their human rights to own and control their image? The Badger doesn’t have the answers, but he senses that AI and human-rights will inevitably be a fertile ground for campaigners, legislators, and regulators for many decades to come…

Facts are facts and will not disappear on account of your likes…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Leadership & Management, Learning, social media

Many years ago, after completing the turnaround and handover of a troublesome major project to a difficult client, the Badger went on holiday in sunnier climes for some rest and recreation. His family had insisted on complete digital disconnection from the world of work during the break, and so the Badger was fully refreshed, keen to catch up with colleagues, and champing at the bit for another challenge on the first morning back at work after the holiday. Shortly after settling into a backlog of emails, however, the Badger’s phone rang – the CEO wanted to see him straight away. With some trepidation, the Badger immediately went to their office in another part of the building.

The CEO greeted the Badger jovially, ushered him to a sofa, and then got straight to the point. A major contract on the company’s routine monitoring list had suddenly escalated as having serious delivery and contractual problems. The CEO said that they were being inundated by different opinions about what had gone wrong and what action was needed. They used a phrase uttered by Clint Eastwood in the film ‘The Dead Pool’, namely ‘Opinions are like a**holes, everyone’s got one’’, to highlight their frustration that opinions were making it difficult to get to the facts they needed to decide a course of action that was in the company’s best interest. The Badger left the CEO’s office with a new task, namely, to establish the facts!     

Having been involved in many problem situations, the Badger had already learned many things, two of which were pertinent to his new task. The first was that the cause of problems rarely sits with just one of line or project management, inter-business unit rivalry, financial controls, people issues, plans and processes, client relationships, requirement and engineering flaws, or contract ambiguities. It’s normally a combination of many of these factors. The second was that having a good grasp of the overall facts was essential to formulating a recovery strategy and action plan that had solid foundations. To get to the facts meant cutting through the opinions, half-truths, distortions, agendas, and finger-pointing of others, by being the completely objective grown up in the room.

So, if you find yourself having to make important decisions during the maelstrom of an escalating problem, then be steadfast, focused, and do what’s needed to ensure you take these decisions based on facts not opinions. Good leaders and managers remember that Nehru once said ‘Facts are facts and will not disappear on account of your likes’.  Nehru died in 1964, but these words remain relevant in today’s world dominated by the clamour of instant opinion from social and mainstream media.  Long-live decision-making based on facts, because without this the future is one of perpetually worsening  chaos!

Toddlers and online safety…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Ethics & Regulation, Online Safety, Online Services, social media, Technology

Gone are the days when toddlers just played with toy cars, trains, books, and physical building blocks, and watched children’s television before bedtime. They learn quickly from those around them, so it’s hardly surprising that they want to play with mobile phones, tablets, and laptops when their parents and grandparents are using them routinely as part of day-to-day life. The Badger’s toddler grandson, for example, already runs around with an old pocket calculator to his ear mimicking a mobile phone, adeptly swipes through the photo gallery on the Badger’s smartphone, and also selects and plays videos on the ‘Hey Duggee’ YouTube channel on a tablet.

Last weekend, as his grandson sat watching ‘Hey Duggee’ on an iPad, the Badger read OFCOM’s ‘Children and parents: media and attitudes report 2022’ .  It’s full of interesting information and hard numbers about how children between the ages of 3 and 17 use the internet and social media. It brings home the fact that the online world is central to children’s lives from a very early age. That’s both a positive thing and a negative, with the negatives falling mainly under the umbrella of the following neat words in an antipodean news article:

‘We’re living through the wild west of the internet. In Google, Facebook, Instagram, Amazon and the rest, we have a new kind of critical infrastructure, not unlike the railroads and telephone lines of the mid-1800s…….we’ve become rapidly dependent on this new critical infrastructure, which has in many ways transformed the world for the better, but we’ve done it before we figured out how to make it safe’.

Responsible parents and grandparents want their offspring to benefit from the positives of the online world from an early age, provided they can be confident in online safety. Unfortunately, confidence isn’t high.  With just under half of children in the UK aged 12 having at least one social media account in 2019, and apparently more PR than substantive improvements in the aftermath of  Molly Russell’s 2022 inquest, the Badger feels that the case for regulation is overwhelming, and that it’s the only way to improve confidence that his grandson will be safe online. 

But here’s the rub. The UK’s Online Safety Bill, here, has been plodding through Parliament since 2019 and looks unlikely to become law before 2024. In the modern world of electronic documents, email, instant messaging, and content sharing, it’s shameful that it takes years to produce legislation that was really needed at least a decade ago.  Why is it taking so long? Is it because politicians are themselves part of the new wild west by over-using the internet and social media for their own ends? Who knows, but with AI set to revolutionise every type of content accessible online, the probability that the Badger’s grandson will enjoy a tamed online wild west seems to be trending towards vanishingly small.   

Redundancy in Meta-land…

Posted on by The Information Badger in social media

The recent Meta announcement about staff redundancies came as no surprise to the Badger. Why? Because with Meta’s share price down by more than 60% over the last year and its metaverse ambitions a potential money pit, the Badger’s felt for a long time that the rubber would hit the road and some corrective action would be necessary. No business is immune to market, consumer, business performance, and investor realities. When a corporation takes corrective action there’s normally some downsizing of the workforce involved, and many loyal, long-serving, hardworking employees suddenly find themselves exited as quickly as the law in a particular country allows. Meta’s redundancies are a reminder that job security in any commercial organisation is wafer thin.

Social media is barely two-decades old. Its rise, as you can see here, has been phenomenal, as has its impact, both positive and negative, on the conduct of our lives. Social media companies aren’t social, not-for-profit enterprises, nor are they charities or bastions of accurate information or free speech. They are, when you cut to the chase, commercial organisations seeking to make money any way they can from information collected from their users. These points came up unexpectedly in a completely unrelated podcast the Badger was listening to this week.  They triggered the Badger to muse on how his usage of social media has changed since first establishing a presence on Facebook in 2010.  

In the first few years, the Badger and his Facebook friends followed a few organisations and regularly shared material relating to their family, local community, interests, and travel. By 2015, however, personal postings had reduced significantly as privacy awareness increased and more unwanted ‘suggested for you’ and similar clutter appeared from the ether. Personal activity on Facebook became intermittent, and then the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke. Since then, the Badger and his friends’ usage of Facebook has amounted to occasional monitoring and a rare post. In our different ways we have all concluded that caution is a good policy because nothing is free in life, and that there’s more to life than being glued to social media feeds. As one friend put it, avid users are those with FOMO (fear of missing out), image conscious wannabes, and those with an ego to massage. That’s a bit strong perhaps, but it’s easy to understand the sentiment.

Richard Holway from TechMarketView  called ‘peak Facebook’ way back in 2018, and the Badger’s changed use of the platform is evidence of his wisdom. This is, of course, no comfort for the 13% of Meta’s workforce who are being made redundant. The Badger feels for them, but hopefully their skill sets will open up new opportunities with other employers and their pain will be short-lived. As for Meta overall, well the Badger senses there’s more pain ahead unless Mr Zuckerberg recognises that he might be part of the problem.

Social media: Molly Russell deserved better…

Posted on by The Information Badger in social media

Executives, leaders, and managers make decisions all the time, normally based on facts, rational analysis of trends and risks, input from trusted advisers, and, of course, the specific objectives and incentives they have been given by their organisation. In rational people these factors dominate the decision-making process, and so any niggling contrarian gut instinct is easily smothered. It’s therefore not very common for decisions to be taken on gut instinct alone. However, the Badger learned from dealing with troublesome situations over the years that gut instinct, or any feeling of unease, should never be suppressed. Why? Because it was common for those in trouble to admit privately that they should have listened to their instincts more before taking a decision that ultimately proved flawed and the root cause of their problems.

There are many times in life when gut instinct tells us that something isn’t right, is too good to be true, or that some attractive short-term path forward has longer term, unpredictable, downsides that are difficult to pin down. It’s this instinct that something isn’t right with social media platforms that has made the Badger limit his use of them in recent years. The testimony of Meta whistle-blower Frances Haugen in October 2021, news that TikTok might face fines for failing to protect children’s privacy, and the testimonies of Pinterest and Meta executives at the inquest into the tragic death of Molly Russell (see here, for example), imply that the Badger’s instincts are sound.       

Social media is a key component of the modern digital world, especially for younger generations who have never experienced life without it. It isn’t going away. However, Frances Haugen’s testimony and advocation for transparency and social media accountability, and what’s emerging during the inquest into Molly Russell’s death, seem to highlight two things. Firstly, that unelected executives at the top of social media companies have become the people who determine what is right or wrong for people to see. Gut instinct says that isn’t right! Secondly, these companies are businesses that put profit before anything else. Whereas good businesses do what’s good for the company and their users, social media companies concentrate on the former and are disdainful of anything that attempts to redress the balance. Gut instinct again suggests that isn’t right!

Tougher regulation must change this situation. Arguments against this on the grounds that it would limit our free speech are spurious and must be resisted because free speech has existed in democracies for way longer than social media has existed. Finally, here’s a shout-out for Ian Russell, Molly’s father. He has become a prominent internet safety campaigner since his daughter’s death, and he has determinedly asked questions about social media platform’s accountability regarding toxic, harmful content. The Badger’s gut instinct is that it would be fitting and right if the outcome of Molly’s inquest creates another headache for Mr Zuckerberg and other information overlords.   

Describe the dynamics of today’s digital world in one word…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Change, Climate & Environment, Delivery, Education, IT Project Management, Life, Online Services, Press & Media, Privacy and Surveillance, Project Management, social media, Technology

Would you find it easy or hard to describe the dynamics of our modern digital world in one word? Would one word immediately come to mind, or would you need time to think before deciding? Rather than decide yourself, would you prefer to converge on a word via a group discussion? What would your word be? An ex senior civil servant, in their eighties with a razor-sharp mind, asked these questions in a recent conversation. The Badger took the easy option, answered ‘don’t know’, and we moved on to other things. The questions, however, have bugged the Badger ever since, and so as Storm Eunice buffeted the windows, he settled in his study listening to a playlist of favourite music to decide his answers.

The answer for the first question was ‘it’s hard’. In fact, it took much longer than expected to decide on one word to answer the last question. The answers to the second and third questions came quick and were straightforward. They were, respectively, time to think rather than spontaneity, and deciding for himself rather than potentially succumbing to  ‘groupthink’. The word the Badger ultimately converged on as the answer to the last question was ‘Creep’.

The word has enormous breadth. In materials technology, ‘creep’ is the movement and permanent deformation of a solid under persistent load ultimately leading to failure. Glaciers and lead on church roofs are simple illustrations of the phenomenon. ‘Scope creep’, when requirements drift away from agreed baselines due to client pressure and poor controls, is well-known to those running businesses, projects, programmes, or service delivery. This kind of ‘creep’ often leads to financial problems, commercial disputes, and serious delays. And then, of course, ‘creep’ is sometimes used to describe people who are unpleasant, untrustworthy, insincere, or are just plain odd in their habits, interests, and behaviours.

‘Creep’ seems a more realistic descriptor for the dynamics of our modern digital world than the word ‘change’. For example, our insatiable demand for resources and fossil fuels is producing creep deformation of aspects of our planet to the point of crisis and questions about our sustainability on it. Additionally, digital innovation and fast technological advancement represents a persistent stress on businesses, governments, and the public producing the erosive creep of personal privacy to the point where societal rupture is a risk. Similarly, the need for social media platforms to keep people engaged and active is causing the creep of fact, news, and sensible debate into just disinformation, misinformation, abuse, and entertainment fuelling growing distrust and antipathy. ‘Creep’, of course, can still be used to describe some people, and it seems particularly apt today for politicians and so-called elites!

Oh, and ‘Creep’, by the way, is a great song by Radiohead! What would your one word to describe the dynamics of today’s world be?

Meta matters and madness…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Opinion, social media

The spectacular drop in Meta’s (Facebook) share price last week has attracted much comment in the media. The drop, which shows up impressively on share price charts like the 1-year one available here, was triggered by a fall in active daily users for the first time in 18 years. It came as little surprise to the Badger who’s long thought a) that Richard Holway at TechMarketView is right in saying that Facebook’s been a toxic brand for some time, and b) that this behemoth is past its prime and way too big and arrogant for its boots!

In the world of business, of course, there’s always ups and downs, crises, and negotiations of all kinds, but when Meta threatens to shutdown Facebook and Instagram in Europe over transatlantic data transfer regulations, then it’s arrogance is plain to see especially when it’s our data that’s at the heart of the matter.  This sabre rattling  received a  ‘Life would be very good without Facebook’ riposte from the EU. Together with the impact of Apple’s ad-tracking change, the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the failure of its Libra crypto currency ambitions, and its risky bet on the ‘Metaverse’, it’s hardly surprising that a wobble in active daily users in core geographies triggered worry about the future and impacted the share price, especially when the company’s already a bête noire amongst the tech giants. The Badger senses that Meta’s future doesn’t look rosy unless there’s huge change.

Having had a presence on Facebook for more than a decade, changes in the way the Badger and his Facebook friends have used the platform perhaps illustrates why a drop in usage should be no surprise. A decade ago, we regularly uploaded and shared photos, registered our location when travelling, shared life events, plans, thoughts, highs and lows, interests, and funny experiences. Today, however, none of us do this. We just post something minimal very occasionally, monitor a few items of ‘followed’ content, and ignore sponsored items or adverts that the platform pushes at us. As one friend put it, ‘Facebook’s a disease we’ve learned that we have to manage to protect ourselves’. If this sentiment is widespread, then more bad news will emerge because it isn’t just younger people deserting the platform, it’s older ones reducing their usage too!

Finally, there’s a madness in society whereby Meta has the power to resist all attempts at having content and media laws that apply in the real world applied to it in the virtual world. There’s little sign of this madness soon dissipating, but at least the fall in share price is a timely warning for Meta and everyone else that no company is too big to fail. The future’s never certain, but with Meta there is a certainty. It’s unlikely to be out of the news anytime soon.

The Web at 30, and getting cancelled…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Learning, Life, Online Services, Opinion, social media, Web

There’s an interesting article entitled ‘Going global: the world the Web has wrought’ in this month’s edition of Physicsworld, the member magazine of the Institute of Physics. It covers how the Web has taken over the world in the last 30 years and the role of physicists and programmers in enabling this to happen. The article points out that the benefits of the Web have not come without tremendous economic and social dislocations, and its last sentence – ‘The world has indeed been transformed by the Web, but not entirely for the better’ – captures a truth that resonates with those whose careers spanned the Web’s progression.

The Badger made this ‘not entirely for the better’ point to a neighbour’s daughter, home from university for the weekend, and got a lecture in response! The Badger is a fuddy-duddy, apparently, whose opinions are irrelevant because his generation are responsible for everything that’s wrong and the Web has brought people nothing but good. Hmm! Resisting the urge to argue, the Badger just smiled and calmly suggested the young lady’s view might change on gaining more life experience after university. With a stare that could kill, she stormed off!

At the local supermarket later, the Badger bumped into her mother who apologetically mentioned that her daughter had ‘cancelled’ the Badger. She then said, ‘Join the club; last week she told me that I was cancelled too’. We laughed. The youngster’s mum theatrically rolled her eyes and then wryly bemoaned the amount of time her daughter spent surfing the Web. Being told you’re cancelled was a new experience, but not a bothersome one because it’s an absurdity that just illustrates the ‘not entirely for the better’ point about the transformational impact of the Web.

Many in our younger generations today seem intent on banning, reinterpreting, or cancelling anyone or anything from earlier times because it might offend. Enabling the growth of a sentiment which redefines the truth and facts of earlier eras stands out as one of the Web’s ‘not entirely for the better’ transformational impacts. Microsoft’s new ‘inclusivity checker’ in Word, see here and here,  is a simple example of the sentiment’s pervasiveness. In the Badger’s view, the words actually written by authors, songsters, and spoken by famous people in earlier times are the facts of their era and suggesting ‘inclusivity’ modifications for them just promotes the breeding of a denial and dishonesty in society that future generations will regret.

From the Badger’s experience above, it seems that all you must do to be cancelled is point out that the Web is ‘not entirely for the better’, be of an older generation, and stand up for the preservation of the language and facts of history, no matter how uncomfortable they may be in a modern setting. If that’s the case, the Web is facilitating the slide to a cultural oblivion that future generations don’t deserve.

Notable events, Weather & Sport – News

Posted on by The Information Badger in Life, Online Services, Smart & New Technology, social media, Technology

The Badger spent most of last week hospitalised in a (non-covid) ward bay with five others from various backgrounds and with a range of ailments. With everyone laid up without family visits, a ‘Band of Brothers’ spirit and strong camaraderie quickly developed. There was lots of time for personal observation, contemplation, and collective discussion on a myriad of topics. One of the key things we all quickly realised, however, was not only the huge benefit that having a smartphone or tablet provided, but also the corrosive effect of the perpetual information that’s a feature of the modern world.

Everyone had a smartphone or a tablet computer with them on admission. The devices, connected to free NHS Wi-Fi, were our personal critical infrastructure for regular voice and video contact with family, browsing the internet, streaming music, and listening to podcasts, radio, and TV. They were our sole conduit to the outside world. However, while everyone in the bay had different interests, internet browsing patterns, and different affinities with social media, it was quickly evident that every one of our ‘Band of Brothers’ distrusted anything they saw or heard via their devices that purported to be news-related!

As one of our illustrious band pointed out, we’re bombarded today by stuff  that  purports to be news, but which is really just a stream of mania, ignorance, babble, bile, character assassination, vendetta, and envy, all of which just spreads confusion, fear and anxiety throughout society. It’s hard to disagree! The reporting of a  truly ‘notable event’ in news is no longer crisp, clear and factual because it’s intertwined with misinformation, speculation, and distorted gossip polluted by social media, celebrity,  and hidden agendas. The internet and the smart devices in our hands have rendered traditional purveyors of news old hat. Even institutions like the BBC struggle to separate fact from fiction and to be impartial. The BBC TV News Channel has been in decline since 2012, and in 2019 Facebook was the third most used news source in England.  OFCOM’s 2020-21 annual report on the BBC also shows that audiences continue to question the BBC’s impartiality.  

The Badger’s hospital stay starkly brought home that news has become a mishmash of skewed information, sound bites, dubious analysis, gossip, celebrity, and organisational agenda rather than fact. Harsh, perhaps, but that’s what all in our ‘Band of Brothers’  felt! The ‘Band of Brothers’ are now all at home and looking forward to Christmas, thankful for the benefit their personal tech provided in hospital, but defiantly against  the babble and unproductive mania that confronts us every day. We made a pact! If  Santa Clause comes under threat, then we’ll start a revolution! And on that note, the Badger thanks you for reading his musings in 2021 and wishes you and your families a happy Christmas and a productive 2022.

Digital pollution

Posted on by The Information Badger in Climate & Environment, Digital devices and the environment, Education, Life, Online Services, Psychology, social media

The High Street, closed to traffic, was crowded with people for the  annual Christmas Street Market. The numerous stalls selling craft items, festive decorations, food, and drink were doing good business. A group of ladies from Rock Choir sang songs and the smell of mulled wine hung enticingly in the air. Turnout was impressive. Everyone was enjoying themselves, especially after covid forced the market’s cancellation last year. Amongst the stalls there some booths where charities and campaign groups were drumming up support for their cause. One of these was manned by a millennial climate change campaigner who radiated enthusiasm. The  crowd moved unexpectedly, and before he could take evasive action the campaigner engaged the Badger in conversation!

Their spiel was well-practiced. Fossil fuels are bad, the oil, plastics, and chemical industries are all irresponsible polluters driven by corporate greed, and people who travel by plane or car are killing the planet. The Badger had no appetite for a prolonged debate, so he pointed to the campaigner’s iPad and to heir colleague listening to music on a smartphone and politely said, ‘You should be looking at your own digital pollution’. Movement of the crowd enabled the Badger to move on before the campaigner, slightly taken aback, could respond.

The Badger’s interest in digital pollution was heightened recently by both reading some articles (e.g. here, here, and here) and getting frustrated at a recent surge in irrelevant emails and ‘you might like’ social media content all of which just got ignored and deleted.  Every email, every interaction with the cloud, every search of the internet, every stream of a song or film, every social media post, every piece of online commentary, argument, misinformation, disinformation and propaganda, and every piece of digital advertising and marketing, not only comes with an emissions price, but also pollutes our well-being – as neatly articulated here.  Digital pollution is real; it has an emissions footprint and an insidious effect on our psychological well-being by affecting our emotional and intellectual capacity. On both counts this is worrying because emissions from building, delivering, and using digital technology already make up 4% of global emissions  and some are predicting an eight-fold rise in data traffic by 2030.

Our digital world has many benefits, but it comes with a form of pollution that’s much less obvious than the oil slicks and plastic flotsam we can readily see. Every interaction with data and online content comes with an emissions price and an insidious impact on how we think, feel, and behave. Just keep this in mind every time you use email, search the internet, and use online services and social media. Young campaigners at Christmas Markets should have digital pollution higher on their agenda. If it’s ignored, then in years to come their children and grandchildren will inevitably blame them for inaction on all of its polluting effects.