💬 Secret, Safe and Informed: A Reflection on Facebook, Cambridge Analytica and the Collection of Data

Replied to Secret, Safe and Informed: A Reflection on Facebook, Cambridge Analytica and the Collection of Data by Aaron DavisAaron Davis (readwriterespond.com)

There have been a lot of discussions lately about Facebook, social media and connected society in light of the Cambridge Analytica revelations. Here are my thoughts on what it might mean to be more informed consent. Secret and Safe?
At the start of Lord of the Rings, Frodo Baggins inherits a ring fr…

Doug, I was looking back at a past post today, and was reacquainted with your DML Central post on the ‘Brief History of Web Literacy’. You attempted to map the eras associated with the internet:

A few years ago, Doug Belshaw made an attempt at mapping the internet. He divided it into five eras:

  • 1993-1997: The Information Superhighway
  • 1999-2002: The Wild West
  • 2003-2007: The Web 2.0 era
  • 2008-2012: The Era of the App
  • 2013+: The Post-Snowden era

I have been thinking lately, with fake news and data breaches, maybe we are entering a new era, what Belshaw mooted as an ‘informed era’.

Source: Secret, Safe and Informed: A Reflection on Facebook, Cambridge Analytica and the Collection of Data – Read Write Respond by Aaron Davis

I was left thinking that in addition to the ‘informed era’, we may have entered a new era with AI?

2 responses on “💬 Secret, Safe and Informed: A Reflection on Facebook, Cambridge Analytica and the Collection of Data”

  1. Reply via Mastodon:

    It’s a good question. There’s a temptation to classify a new era with every major new technology (VR, blockchain, etc) but I guess with AI things are qualitatively different in some ways. Probably too early to tell.

    If there *is* a post-2023 AI era I’d wager there’s also one before it from about 2017-2022 which has something to do with enclosure, authoritarianism, and what Doctorow eventually identified as enshittification.

    TL;DR: the time when it became all but impossible impossible to avoid cloud services and Big Tech

    Reply

  2. I have always disliked Substack, but I’m beginning to see why people move to Substack, which handles all these problems for them. I would just say to the proponents of the open web: If you want more people to move onto the open web, you have to be more patient with them than you’ve been with me, and you have to be willing to provide more basic instruction than, so far, you’ve been willing to provide to me.

    Changes Ahead by Alan Jacobs

    Alan Jacob’s reflections on living on the open web reminds me of Doug Belshaw’s recent remark about enshittification:

    @mrkrndvs If there *is* a post-2023 AI era I’d wager there’s also one before it from about 2017-2022 which has something to do with enclosure, authoritarianism, and what Doctorow eventually identified as enshittification.

    TL;DR: the time when it became all but impossible impossible to avoid cloud services and Big Tech

    https://social.coop/@dajb/112705414633920272

    Reply

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