kites can’t jive (August 2020)
Did I even listen to any new music in August? I know I did but I’d be hard pressed to tell what any of it was. No surprise: Melbourne in its hardest coronavirus lockdown yet and, yeah, time doesn’t really exist any more.
Still, The Beth’s dropped a new album, Jump rope gazers, and that’s cause for celebration.
I adore The Beths. Their second albums expands on their fantastic debut without losing all the charm and personality that made it such a rush. Frontwoman Elizabeth Stokes has a real gift for humour and deft phrasing; there’s something new to fall in love with on every listen.
Other highlights
Super natural by Jonnie. A solo EP from one of the members of HTRK. Can’t go wrong.
ENERGY by Disclosure. Want some bangers? Have some bangers.
1000 gecs and The Tree of Clues by 100 gecs. More bangers but now they’re angry.
Always was by Briggs. A deadly EP from Senator Briggs.
Sleep tracking in watchOS 7: simple but thoughtful
Ryan Christoffel, writing about the upcoming sleep tracking features in watchOS 7 for MacStories:
I’ve been using the new sleep-related features of Apple’s forthcoming OS versions for two full months now, and in true Apple fashion, they’re in some ways more comprehensive and elegant than third-party solutions, and in other ways they’re underpowered.
More or less what we expected. And Apple’s take on sleep tracking does have some truly ingenious touches:
A similar long-time annoyance I’ve had with the Apple Watch and iPhone’s alarm system involves the times I would get up before my alarm went off. In watchOS 7, the Apple Watch will detect when I seem to be awake and moving about before my alarm has come due and will send a notification that offers to turn my alarm off.
And, in typical Apple fashion, Ryan didn’t get the notification if he had just gotten up for a moment in the middle of the night. Fantastic feature.
My only question about sleep tracking and the Apple Watch: when are we going to see watch bands from Apple that are designed to be slept in? The current bands are fine but not the most comfortable for bed.
A lot of people would roll their eyes at watch bands for bed, sure, but people who really care about comfort and design would jump at them. So, you know, Apple’s core fan base. Bonus points if there’s a Pride edition as well.
Can Uber delete itself?
Some companies, however, are taking a stand once and for all against racism. Uber has begun plastering cities across the country with billboards proclaiming: “If you tolerate racism, delete Uber.” Uber being the same company which continues shoveling money into a legal fight to continue treating their employees as independent contractors who do not deserve full legal protection, and the same company found earlier this year to be utilizing a handy-dandy algorithm that charges riders more for rides to non-white neighborhoods. Uber, perhaps, should consider deleting itself.
kites can’t jive (July 2020)
I’m obsessed with Palimpsest by Protest the Hero. I was a big fan of theirs in the mid-to-late 2000s. Keiza, Fortress, and Scurrilous (the band’s first and second albums respectively) slay: a perfect combination of energising metal riffs and captivating vocals.
But, after that, I fell off the band. Drifted away from metal as a genre. Now, nine years later, Protest the Hero have released Palimpsest (their fifth album) and I love it. It has everything I loved about their previous work and a great narrative hook: the songs are re-tellings of American history.
Take my favourite two tracks.
“The Fireside” presents a version of Pearl Harbor wherein the bombing provides a reason to go to war that US leaders wanted all along:
I’ve got a job for every able-bodied man
Munition factories for women and children
And all we needed was a reason
And you gave us one
You gave us one
“Soliloquy” is an infectious and dramatic story from the perspective of bank robber “Baby Face” Nelson:
You can reach for your service pistol
By the time you get it
I’m betting that this will be over and done with
Leave your badge and your gun
You won’t be coming home tonight
Well worth a spin if you’re into metal.
Other highlights
Expect the unexpected by 79rs Gang. Impossibly cool. The album looks to bring “New Orleans Mardi Gras Indian culture… to dance floors and block parties around the world” and it does. Just give it a spin.
The light pack by Joey Badass. Joey cannot be stopped.
Staying power by Emma Ruth Rundle. I love everything Rundle’s released and this is no different.
Drop 6 by Little Simz. Simz is on fire. One of my favourite rappers in the game right now.
Palimpsest by Protest the Hero. Protest the Hero are back with their fifth album (and their first in four years). It might be their best.
Joy as an act of resistance by IDLES. Rock music (don’t call it punk) at it’s most vibrant and vital.
The public helped fund great tech – what should they get in return?
Mariana Mazzucato, in her book The value of everything:
Yet in presenting themselves as modern-day heroes, and justifying their record profits and cash mountains, Apple and other companies conveniently ignore the pioneering role of government in new technologies. Apple has unashamedly declared that its contribution to society should not be sought through tax but through recognition of its great gizmos. But where did the smart tech behind those gizmos come from? Public funds. The Internet, GPS, touchscreen, SIRI and the algorithm behind Google – all were funded by public institutions. Shouldn‘t the taxpayer thus get something back, beyond a series of undoubtedly brilliant gadgets? Simply to pose this question, however, underlies how we need a radically different type of narrative as to who created the wealth in the first place – and who has subsequently extracted it.
Mazzucato argues we need new stories and new ideas to shape how we think about value, capitalism, and economics. I‘ve only just started her book but she‘s building a strong case.
Why time is weird in lockdown
Time is weird right now. Feilding Cage found out why:
Think back to when you were asked to stay home to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus. Did that period go by quickly or slowly?
Most New Yorkers, for example, were asked to stay home beginning some time in March, and many seemed to note that April flew by despite the repetitive days.
Craig Callender, a professor of philosophy at the University of California San Diego, explains that we’re making this judgment based on an event recalled from our longer term memory.
“If you think of every salient event as ticks of the clock, there weren’t that many ticks in April so it feels like time went by really fast,” he said.
The full piece has a five simple tests to illustrate how people perceive time. Worth a throw if you’ve found yourself baffled by how slippery the days and hours have seemed lately.
China has been playing the long game. The US, not so much
Patrick Wintour, writing about the brewing cold war between China and the US:
China has been lucky in its enemy. Just as China has courted its allies, Trump has insulted his. Mira Rapp-Hooper, in her new book Shields of the Republic, documents both how Trump has gloried in the destruction of alliances, and the price the US is paying. She concludes: “Trump does not need legally to sever treaty alliances – by treating them as protection rackets for which the protected parties can never pay enough, he obviates them. By embracing adversaries, he challenges the very notion that his allies share threats.” Not surprisingly some Chinese diplomats would welcome Trump’s re-election, and another swing of the wrecking ball he brings to the western alliance.
Yet at the 11th hour there may be a reversal of fortunes, largely caused by China behaving as foolishly as Trump.
TikTok, Douyin, and the “dystopian censorship machine”
The Telegraph received leaked documents about the “dystopian censorship machine” that is Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.
Laurence Dodds explains:
One system can use facial recognition to scan live streamers‘ broadcasts and guess their age, reporting them to a human moderator if they appear under 16.
Another checks whether users‘ faces match their state ID cards before letting them stream, automatically excluding foreigners and people from Hong Kong.
Another system assigns streamers, who are expected to uphold “public order and good customs“, a “safety rating“, similar to a “credit score”. If the score dips below a certain level, they are punished automatically.
That’s quite the surveillance system, if it works as described. It’s not hard to imagine how suppressive it could be and how well it’d create cultural hegemony. That’s especially important, given that the platform has an overwhelmingly young audience.
The article goes onto to mention how a live stream was shut down because a British man appeared on camera for a few minutes. “Foreigners without government ‘permission’” aren’t allowed on the platform.
Dodds asked TikTok how much, if any, of this tech is part of their app. The company wouldn’t answer. They’ve been trying to seperate themselves from Douyin for a while now. Dodging these questions isn’t the way to do it.
Meanwhile, speech and text recognition is used to ferret out sins such as “feudal superstition“, defamation of the Communist Party and even ASMR, which is banned because it has become too “pornographic“.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
Facebook’s civil rights failure
Facebook hired two civil rights experts – Laura Murphy and Megan Cacace – to write a report on the company’s practices. It went as well as you’d expect.
Judd Legum covered the report for Popular Information:
The report zeroes in on what’s troubling about Facebook’s policies, as articulated by Clegg and Zuckerberg. They do not represent a commitment to free expression. The policies privilege expression of the powerful over all other people. This is not just unfair — it makes it even more challenging to protect civil rights on the platform.
Elevating free expression is a good thing, but it should apply to everyone. When it means that powerful politicians do not have to abide by the same rules that everyone else does, a hierarchy of speech is created that privileges certain voices over less powerful voices. The prioritization of free expression over all other values, such as equality and non-discrimination, is deeply troubling to the Auditors. Mark Zuckerberg’s speech and Nick Clegg’s announcements deeply impacted our civil rights work and added new challenges to reining in voter suppression.
The report recommends Facebook reverse these policies, but it’s a recommendation that Facebook will almost certainly ignore. And with two sets of policies around speech — one for the powerful and one for everyone else — can Facebook ever effectively protect civil rights?
Free speech without safeguards isn’t free speech: it’s the status quo, with all the impediments to free speech (for some) and failures that entails.
Prioritising free expression above all else feels like a simple way to ensure that everyone can speak freely. But it doesn’t work. Not in a world where things like discrimination, bigotry and marginalisation exist. They all, explicitly and implicitly, create an environment where only certain people can speak and even fewer people will be heard.
Tech exec wants to recreate the creepy surveillance tech from The Dark Knight
A tech exec by the name of Chris Larsen wants to install high-def security cameras all around San Fransisco to help battle the city’s crime. He thinks that’s a good idea.
Nellie Bowles spoke to him for the New York Times:
In San Francisco, where many locals push for this kind of police reform, those same locals are tired of the break-ins. So how do they reconcile “defund the police” with “stop the smash and grabs”?
Mr. Larsen believes he has the answer: Put security cameras in the hands of neighborhood groups. Put them everywhere. He’s happy to pay for it.
There are countless reasons to have a problem with this. Pointing out that Nextdoor – a decentralised social media platform for communities – is a cesspit of racism, fear mongering, and profiling is the most glib.
There’s no reason to think that pervasive surveillance in the hands of “neighbourhood groups” won’t be the same.
Unfortunately, Bowles’s article doesn’t engage with any of the potential pitfalls in Larsen’s plan outside of privacy concerns. The whole thing reads more like a puff piece or an ad than a measured assessment of something that would affect the lives of everyone in the city, if Larsen follows through with his idea.
He argued that trust [with law enforcement] will come in the form of full city camera coverage, so police can play a smaller, more subtle role. Individual vigilantism will not work, he argued, but strong neighborhoods with continuous video feeds on every corner will.
“That’s the winning formula,” Mr. Larsen said. “Pure coverage.”
Police do need to play a smaller role in people’s lives. But they need to be replaced with well-funded support structures, like mental health facilities, safe injecting rooms and drug rehabilitation groups, and all the other things that make up a robust safety net. That’s how you restore trust in local communities.
Pervasive surveillance isn’t a sign of trust. Nor is it a path to it. We won’t build a healthy community by watching each other all of the time.
Memeing law into existence: San Fran introduces the CAREN Act
CNN:
It may soon be illegal to make discriminatory, racially biased 911 calls in San Francisco.
The “CAREN Act” (Caution Against Racially Exploitative Non-Emergencies) was introduced on Tuesday at a San Francisco Board of Supervisors meeting by Supervisor Shamann Walton.
The ordinance‘s name is a twist on “Karen,” the name social media gives people making racially biased 911 calls.
Beautiful. I’ve never wanted to be the person who comes up with acronyms for things more.
What would it mean if Facebook and Google left Hong Kong?
Facebook and Google are weighing up their options after a new security law out of Beijing that “mandates police censorship and covert digital surveillance” in Hong Kong came into practice.
They seem to have three options:
- Comply, giving up on their ideals of free speech
- Refuse and face fines and potentially jail time
- Pull out of Hong Kong
TikTok have taken path three. What would it mean if Facebook and Google did the same?
Karen Chiu explains how popular the platforms are for the South China Morning Post (which is owned by Alibaba, a multibillion dollar Chinese tech company):
Facebook, Hong Kong’s most popular social network, has a penetration rate of over 80 per cent, according to the latest available data from Statista. WhatsApp, the top messaging app, trails not far behind at just under 80 per cent.
Instagram comes in at around 60 per cent. On the other hand, the mainland’s unrivalled social king, WeChat, is used by just 54 per cent in Hong Kong.
Tsao said Google, which pulled its search engine out of the mainland in 2010 after the company suffered a major hack, is ubiquitous in Hong Kong.
People in Hong Kong would face a terrible situation if Facebook, Google, and Twitter left the region. There are few viable options for information sharing if China’s Great Firewall arrives in earnest. VPNs would only be so effective: the law applies regardless of where the platform or server is located.
This, of course, is the point. The law put in place by Beijing is about stifling dissent. It’s about controlling information, one way or the other.
Concern over TikTok is “international politics thinly veiled as a data ethics
Samantha Floreani, arguing that consternation over TikTok ignores the reality that other, US-based social media platforms doing the same things TikTok is being criticised for:
This is not to defend TikTok – their data collection, use and disclosure practices are undoubtedly invasive, and present acute privacy and security risks. We should absolutely be thinking critically about how any app handles information, especially those targeted specifically at users under 18. Of course, the context of an app such as this and its links to China should also be considered – we all know China has a deeply concerning record when it comes to respecting people’s privacy or human rights more broadly.
But the data habits of big tech companies should not be framed as an “over there” problem.
[…]
Some of those who recently expressed concern about data harvesting are likely to be bellwether friends. What we’re seeing is international politics thinly veiled as a data ethics issue, without any gumption to actually address the underlying problems that are much, much bigger than TikTok.
If you’re going to use something as a proxy to get after China, pick a better target than TikTok.
“Scream inside your heart”: advice for rollercoasters (and everyday life)
BBC:
Fuji-Q Highland near Tokyo re-opened last month after its virus shutdown.
It asked riders to avoid screaming when they go on its rollercoasters, to minimise spreading droplets, and instead “scream inside your heart”.
Aren’t we all?
Hong Kong is the next battleground in the tech Cold War between China and the
The Chinese Government has announced a sweeping new law for Hong Kong that aims to “crack down on opposition to Beijing”. It was drafted in “unusual secrecy” and “took effect immediately, even though the public was seeing it in full only for the first time”.
Part of the law affects what people say online:
The new law mandates police censorship and covert digital surveillance, rules that can be applied to online speech across the world.
Now, the Hong Kong government is crafting web controls to appease the most prolific censor on the planet, the Chinese Communist Party.
It functionally turns any criticism about the Chinese and Hong Kong governments into “national security data”, as
Based on the law, the Hong Kong authorities have the remit to dictate the way people around the world talk about the city’s contested politics.
Battle lines are being drawn:
Many big tech companies, including Facebook, Google, Twitter, Zoom and LinkedIn, have said in the past two days that they would temporarily stop complying with requests for user data from the Hong Kong authorities. The Hong Kong government, in turn, has made it clear that the penalty for noncompliance with the law could include jail time for company employees.
Meanwhile, TikTok is pulling their app from the App and Play Store rather than get into a fight – both with the Chinese Government and with public opinion – they know they can’t win:
The move comes as TikTok parent ByteDance has looked to more clearly separate TikTok, which operates outside of China, from a similar app used within mainland China. The company has said that TikTok has not shared data with the Chinese government nor would it, a position that would be difficult — if not impossible — to maintain under the new law.
This is another stage in the tech Cold War between China and the US but it feels like a big one. It’s a lot more ideological than whether or not Huawei can build 5G capabilities in your country.
Companies like Facebook and Twitter have built their platforms on the importance of free speech. It sometimes feels like a fig leaf for an unwillingness or inability to monitor their sites but it nonetheless appears sincere.
This law is a significant attack against that and it’s magnified by the streak of libertarianism that runs through Silicon Valley.
Combine all of that with the US Government’s commitment to free speech (in the abstract, if not the practical, given the President’s view of the media) and their antipathy towards the Chinese Government and you have a situation.
Meanwhile, China is a sizeable market for all US tech and internet companies. How much of that are they willing to risk?
China isn’t doing anything new or surprising. They’re a world power with an authoritarian government. More than that, they’re a world power that’s reclaiming it’s previous status on the global stage – one that they feel they lost because of Western powers (which isn’t altogether incorrect). And they have the economic power to back that up.
Every company and government that’s dependent on China for economic reasons is constantly weighing that against the actions of the Chinese Government in other areas. There are undeniable moral and ideological differences between the two groups.
Eventually, we’ll reach a moment when the former no longer trumps the latter and decision makers in the West will have to decide what they stand for.
Maybe I’m just biased to the importance of the internet, but it feels like we’ve taken a pretty big step towards that moment.
Apple never really gave Apple Arcade a chance (and that’s why it needs to change)
Looks like Apple Arcade may not be going as planned. They’re cutting some games in development and moving to more addictive games, according to a report from Mark Gurman and Jason Schreier in Bloomberg:
On calls in mid-April, an Apple Arcade creative producer told some developers that their upcoming games didn’t have the level of “engagement” Apple is seeking, the people said. Apple is increasingly interested in titles that will keep users hooked, so subscribers stay beyond the free trial of the service, according to the people. They asked not to be identified discussing private conversations.
[…]
On the calls with developers in April, the Apple Arcade representative cited a specific example of the type of game the company wants: Grindstone, an engaging puzzle-action game by Capybara Games that has many levels.
Grindstone is great. But it’s a refined, well-polished version of all the mobile games that hook you in with moreish, one-more-round puzzles as a way of getting you to pay for in-game currency or extra lives via microtransactions. That’s not a criticism of Grindstone: it’s a fantastic version of that kind of game and it’s all the better because Apple Arcade’s model means it doesn’t need those in-app purchases. So it’s no surprise that it has some of the highest levels of “engagement” among Arcade’s offerings.
But Apple Arcade was pitched as an antidote to those kinds of games. And focusing solely on “engagement” misses the point of what makes games valuable in the first place.
I spent most of my time in Apple Arcade in Grindstone but it’s not the most memorable experience . I certainly wouldn’t recommend people subscribe to the service to play it. It’s not even the best version of the one-more-round puzzler on offer, in my opinion: Card of Darkness has a lot more going for it.
Sayonara Wild Hearts, meanwhile, is straight-up one of the coolest games I’ve ever played. It was the reason I tried Apple Arcade in the first place. Give me one of them every few months and I’ll sub for a while. I think about it all the time; I listened to the soundtrack on Apple Music non-stop for almost three months. It’s amazing.
But it’s also a play-through-once-and-never touch-it-again game. And that’s okay. I don’t need mobile games I go to again and again and again. And trying to provide that via a subscription kind of misses the point of those games anyway. A mobile game subscription makes sense if you’re offering a slew of great games that’ll occupy you for a little while before you move onto something else. That makes sense for the model.
My partner is currently obsesses with a Candy-Crush-like game were you solve a bunch of symbol-match puzzles in order to refurbish a mansion. She’s been playing it nightly for the last little while. Before that, it was a word game. Before that, it was a different word game. She’s the model mobile game player: get into a game for a little while, play it exclusively, move onto something else.
It’s high engagement. But it doesn’t make sense for a subscription. Why pay a monthly fee when you can get more-or-less the same experience for free? People may end up spending more in micro-transactions but no-one ever goes into one of those games thinking they’ll buy the in-game currency.
Apple Arcade was a chance to do something different in the mobile game space. And it delivered some cool, interesting, and fun stuff. It was always going to be a tough sell: their hasn’t been a consistent flow of fantastic, single-hit games on the App Store to built a real, vibrant audience for this kind of stuff. There have been a lot of amazing games, of course, but they pale into comparison to the addictive, “high engagement” games on the platform. Part of that is because of the business model Apple promoted in the App Store. Hard to build a high quality, standalone game when you can only charge a few dollars a pop.
Apple never gave the kinds of games Apple Arcade promoted a chance to thrive on their own. That’s why the service was so appealing – maybe they’d finally have one – but that makes it hard to get people who aren’t already into those kinds games a reason to subscribe. They’ve got their games already and they’re the games the App Store has always prioritised, thank you very much.
I’m reading a lot into their statements here but it looks like they could be sacrificing that to do a slightly more polished version of what’s already out there. I’m sure it’s a wise business decision and I’m sure they know what they’re doing –it’d be remiss of me to assume they don’t understand why people play the mobile games they do. But it’s still a disappointing move.
Hopefully the Sayonara Wild Hearts of Apple Arcade still get made. And I’m sure they will. After all, Netflix pump out mediocre show after mediocre show and fall onto greatness occasionally. No reason that won’t happen with games here.
kites can't jive (June 2020)
June needs to be a month of change. The Black Lives Matter movement reverberated around the world and reminded everyone, again, that the USA, Australia, and elsewhere have systematically destroyed the lives of black people. And that needs to change. And that change involves the structures that govern every day life and it involves us, as individuals.
kites can’t jive is a music column. It’s narrow in its focus. But part of June’s changes, for me, was to listen to more black musicians. Sometimes it was rediscovering an old favourite, sometimes it was looking for new voices. It was always about listening to the stories of talented artists.
This isn’t activism. It’s not a replacement for the work we all need to do to tear down systemic racism or address the history of injustice our societies have perpetuated. Education is important, yeah, and listening to and supporting the work of black artists can be part of that.
But you don’t get to listen to a few tracks and read a book or two and say “I’m done”. This is step one. This is a soundtrack. There’s a lot more work to do.
Listen to this
Nyaaringu by Miiesha
Mieesha’s Nyaaringu is incredible. Just take a moment to go listen to album opener “Caged bird”. It’s a perfect encapsulation of the album: the moving spoken word, provided by Miiesha’s late grandmother, Miiesha’s voice, and an exploration of her experience as a young Indigenous woman.
The second song on the album, “Black privilege“ continues the theme:
Funny, when I lose, you keep on complaining Then write the new rules, just to be bent on breaking Told me that I choose the noose that you’ve been making Then I need to prove I’m worthy of saving
Nyaaringu would be great if it was just the songs. But the spoken word interludes from Miiesha’s grandmother are peppered throughout the album. Her story, her advice, and recollections mirror, extend, and contextualise Miiesha’s lyrics.
It’s a reminder of an important truth: the struggles Miiesha’s singing about have been here for a long time. And, as she says on “Black privilege“ they’re a result of deliberate choices by white Australia.
Other highlights
Black thoughts by Ziggy Ramo. A stunning debut album that explores Australia’s history of racism, colonialism, and trauma.
Rosetta - EP by Dua Salah. Soulful, hypnotic hip-hop about everything from race, to gender, to identity, and more.
Dead like me by Danny Denial. Heartfelt, raw, catchy rock that mixes bits of indie and grunge. “Suck my Jesus” has a perfectly infectious hook you’ll feel weird about singing around the house.
Pleasure venom – EP by Pleasure Venom. Everything you want in a banger of a post-punk record.
ALL-AMERIKKKAN BADASS by Joey Badass. Badass takes his golden-age-of-hip-hop sound, pushes it forward, and uses it tell listeners what it’s like to live in the US as a young black man.
The return by Sampa The Great. Fantastic storytelling, tight flows, and a real statement of intent in Sampa The Great’s fantastic debut album.
RTJ4 by Run The Jewels. If there was ever a time for RTJ to come out swinging, it’s now.
Abandoned language by dälek. “Turn that page muthafucka cause our story’s all scripted. 600 years, ain’t a fuckin' thing different. Don’t speak to us about strength and upliftment. The closest thing to paradise is mad distant.”
Everyone’s joining the ban train
The bans are flowing.
Reddit banned r/The_Donald, r/ChapoTrapHouse, and 2,000+ other subreddits:
Reddit will ban r/The_Donald, r/ChapoTrapHouse, and about 2,000 other communities today after updating its content policy to more explicitly ban hate speech.
“I have to admit that I’ve struggled with balancing my values as an American, and around free speech and free expression, with my values and the company’s values around common human decency,” Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said in a call with reporters.
It’s almost as if people are realising that no one platform has an obligation to house abusive, degrading discussion.
That’s not incompatible with free speech.
Every discussion reaches an end point, for a time. That means platform holders do, at some point, get to say “Hey, you’ve been talking about this for a while now and we’ve decided that people shouldn’t be vilified or denigrated on the basis of their race. That’s the decision we’ve reached after your voluminous arguments here”.
That’s how the entirely fictional “marketplace of ideas” is supposed to work. People agitate for a point of view and, if they’re convincing, that point of view is codified in the policies and laws and moral code of a society. In the case of online chatter, those policies manifest as bans or community guidelines.
These things are never definitive and permanent. People will keep arguing that, hey, maybe people should be attacked on the basis of their race and those people may successfully convince major online platforms that those arguments should be allowed. They’ve certainly done a good job of it at the highest levels of government for a long, long time.
But, for now, the pendulum seems to be swinging ever-so-slightly away from that POV. It’s only taken years to get here.
Back to the bans.
Twitch has “temporarily” banned Donald Trump’s account:
Twitch has temporarily banned President Donald Trump, in the latest surprise and high-profile suspension from the streaming service. Trump’s account was banned for “hateful conduct” that was aired on stream, and Twitch says the offending content has now been removed.
This comes after Twitch permanently banned the massively popular Dr Disrespect for as-yet unknown reasons and swathes of other streamers over sexual abuse allegations. (There’s nothing to suggest that Disrespect’s ban falls into that category, though.
Meanwhile, the Indian Government has shut down a long list of Chinese-based apps:
The government of India has decided to ban 59 apps of Chinese origin as border tensions simmer in Ladakh after a violent, fatal face-off between the Indian and Chinese armies. The list of apps banned by the government includes TikTok, which is extremely popular.
A government press release announcing the ban stated: “The Ministry of Information Technology, invoking it’s power under section 69A of the Information Technology Act read with the relevant provisions of the Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking of Access of Information by Public) Rules 2009 and in view of the emergent nature of threats has decided to block 59 apps since in view of information available they are engaged in activities which is prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of state and public order”.
Others include ShareIt, Clash of Kings, WeChat, and UC Browser. Here’s a full list.
This is what it looks like when a government is really trying to limit what people say and where they say it.
Update
YouTube has removed five channels used by high-profile white nationalists in the US:
The removed accounts include those owned by far-right political entertainer Stefan Molyneux, white nationalist outlets American Renaissance and Radix Journal, as well as longtime Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. YouTube also removed two associated channels: one belonging to alt-right poster boy Richard Spencer and another hosting American Renaissance podcasts.
iOS 14's widgets bring the Windows Phone dream back to life
Tom Warren, sparking joy in my heart:
Microsoft showed off the future of mobile home screens a decade ago with Windows Phone. The key to the vibrant interface was Live Tiles, animated widgets that felt alive. Nothing has lived up to it ever since.
I’ve always wanted Apple to bring these Live Tiles to the iPhone. Apple’s overhauled iOS 14 home screen finally does that, enabling lively widgets for apps that sit on the home screen. It’s the final addition to the iPhone that I’ve been missing from Windows Phone, 10 years after Microsoft first introduced Live Tiles to the world.
I hadn’t made the connection but I can’t not see the similarities between Windows Phone’s Live Tiles and the widgets in iOS 14. And I love it.
I’m one of the few unabashed fans of Windows Phone that ever existed and Live Tiles were part of why. I don’t think enough apps ever used them to their potential (there weren’t enough apps on Windows Phone period) but I daresay iOS’s home screen widgets will see more uptake and more experimentation. The dream lives on.
In more ways than one: Windows Phone had one home screen and an alphabetical list of all your apps one swipe away. The App Library will be a step towards that.
All I need now is an iPhone with a bit of Nokia-Lumia-800 flair to its hardware design. The iPhone 5 already had that feel to it. You can do it again, Apple.
Platforms like Mixer, Twitch, and YouTube don’t care about you
Microsoft shuttered their streaming service Mixer without warning. That extends to people streaming on the platform – most of them found out at the same time we did. Here’s Alex Walker, reporting for Kotaku:
Some Mixer streamers discovered the news during the middle of their stream, while they were processing the shock of racial allegations the company. “Mixer just tweeted, let’s go Mixer,” streamer PrincessCourt told her chat, resulting in a long, quiet stare at the screen while she processed the news.
This must be devastating for people who have built an audience on Mixer. Especially since Mixer presented the shutdown and the shift to Facebook Gaming as a good thing.
That’s, ah, a failure of communications right there.
The headline on Walker’s article, itself a quote from PrincessCourt, is right: “They clearly don’t give a shit.” And, really, services like Mixer (and Twitch, and YouTube) don’t care about most of the people streaming on their platform.
A lot of people within those companies care about streamers, of course. But, organisationally, most creators don’t matter. The big ones – the people who pull in massive numbers – matter because they’re the people who provide scale. And scale is how outfits like Mixer make money and gain any semblance of cultural cache.
YouTube celebrated small, indie creators for a time because that’s how they built scale. Once the company was big enough and, for all intents and purposes, a monopoly, those smaller creators were less important. A whole lot of other things – like massively popular creators and music labels and movie studios – were driving millions of views and, thus, millions of dollars in revenue.
That matters more, to YouTube and to Mixer and to Twitch, than fostering a familial relationship with small-fry makers.
And that’s the tragedy, really. Services like Mixer and all the rest push this cultural line of “You matter, we’re a community, we’re a family” to hide the fact that, when you publish videos on these services, you’re working for them. You’re finding views and giving them something to run ads against.
You’re an employee, but you’re not. So you don’t deserve the same treatment or protections.
And, unless you’re someone they need to make a whole lot of money, you don’t matter. They don’t give a shit.