Five Links #10
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Absorbing
Five links for your inbox from this week.
1. Facebook’s secret data-collecting weapon: the pixel
This is another great piece from Julia Angwin at The Markup, looking at the Facebook Pixel. The Facebook Pixel is a seemingly innocuos tool that’s responsible for a significant portion of Facebook’s data collection outside of the platform. Incidentally, Facebook get more data from third-party sites than they do from users on the platform.
The worst part? Facebook Pixel data is often collected without user’s consent or knowledge.
2. Are my third parties green?
A tool to check how green the third-party scripts and assets on a website are.
3. RSS Best Practices
A useful run down of how to set up an RSS feed.
4. Create a ‘do not backup’ folder
This is just a brilliantly simple idea: create a folder on your computer that’s excluded from Time Machine/Backblaze/Dropbox/Sync/whatever you use.
Whenever you need to temporarily store something you would never want to be backed up, put it in that folder.
5. Internet “influencers” and “creators”
Two interesting definitions from Robin Sloan:
An accurate definition of “influencer” is: a virtuoso of a particular internet platform; someone who has learned to use its mechanisms to achieve their own objectives, rather than the other way around.
An accurate definition of an internet “creator” would have to be: someone whose income is determined by a platform’s algorithms.
Projects + other things
- Below Radar has a totally redesigned website with lots of new areas, including Resources, Articles, Stories and more.
- Scruples: we’re booking new projects from August.
- My Unoffice Hours are available every two weeks on Wednesdays. Next slot: June 29th.
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Until next time,
Dave