Five Links #11
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Absorbing
Five links for your inbox from this week.
1. Data reform in the UK
Concerning times as the UK government seek to strip digital rights (under the auspices of ‘simplification’) and make it more difficult for individuals to challenge data misuse. They’re simultaneously introducing an Online Safety Bill that could have a devastating impact on any site with user-to-user content (comments sections, forums, etc):
Identity verification packaged as age verification packaged as child safety, imposed over all content on all topics, again packaged as child safety.
And as for the much-touted dog-whistle policy of ‘getting rid of cookie banners’:
The simplest way to explain this is that it’s going to be like cookie popups, mandated onto every site and service, at the point of page load, regardless of any subsequent interaction with the service. Except that instead of asking you to confirm your choices, it’s going to be asking you to confirm your identity.
If you run a website read every word of this. There’s a strong change the changes will affect you.
2. Kagi Privacy Search + Browser
There’s a new privacy-focused search engine and browser in town. I’ve been trying them out over the past week and I’m impressed.
The search collates results from Google, Bing, Wikipedia and others, acting as an intermediary to protect your privacy. The service costs $10/month to search more than 80 times, but there are some really neat innovations, particularly the ability to block/boost domains in results and Lenses features.
Kagi’s browser is free. It’s based on WebKit (the same rendering engine as Safari) and doesn’t send any telemetry data back to Kagi, increasing user privacy in an area not replicated by other browsers.
3. PHP Monitor
This is a super helpful app to switch local PHP versions easily.
4. Rabbit Hole podcast
This is a great mini-series looking that the real-world impact of algorithms, particularly on YouTube, framed around a few key stories. Well-worth a listen.
5. Advertisers paid extra to make their digital marketing worse, not better
Studies have shown that these inferences are inaccurate, if not completely wrong. For example, a 2019 study showed that a single targeting parameter, gender, derived from anonymous website visitation patterns was only 42% accurate, worse than random. If you did no targeting at all, and just did “spray and pray” with your digital ads, you’d at least hit one of the genders 50% of the time. When two parameters were taken into account – age and gender – the accuracy dropped as low as 12%. That’s like 9 times out of 10, those targeting parameters were wrong. And advertisers paid extra to make their digital marketing worse, not better.
Emphasis my own.
That last sentence is the kicker. How long will adtech, or their customers, ignore the increasing numbers of reports like this?
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