Matt BlazeI will admit I still don't understand what's so offensive about my pointing out the unsafe, confusing semantics of the Mastodon PM mechanism, or why this topic seems to provoke so much anger.
Basically, I have learned nothing from your yelling.
Anyway, while I don't understand why this pisses some people off so much, or why they take my critique of the Mastodon PM semantics so personally, it's now very clear that it does piss some people off quite a bit.
But I'm not going to let that stop me. I'm an expert on security and privacy. And my job is, in large part, to act as a public intellectual. Warning people of dangerous designs that could cause them harm is what I do. If doing so makes me an asshole, so be it.
It's sometimes difficult to remember that communications platforms, including social media platforms like this one, attract a very wide variety of users with a wide range of circumstances. The same systems we might use only for trivial chitchat are likely also being used by political dissidents, labor organizers, and others for whom mistakes can have very serious consequences.
Making social media platforms reliably usable is important, even if it might not seem so to us personally.
Twitter was, of course, a repeated example of this. It was never *intended* to be a tool for dissidents or for organizing protests. But within a few years of its introduction, that became a major secondary function of the platform, in the US as well as in some very repressive regimes. It happened to meet the needs of these communities, and they just started using it in ways its designers never specifically anticipated.
Design as if your users' lives might depend on your choices.
Richard W. Woodley ELBOWS UP 🇨🇦🌹🚴♂️📷 🗺️@mattblaze
perhaps that is why it had to be destroyed and who better to do it than the man at the top of the billionaire class
perhaps that is why it had to be destroyed and who better to do it than the man at the top of the billionaire class
JZP@the5thColumnist @mattblaze no "perhaps" about it. The Saudi $ was to prevent another "Arab Spring"
Chris Bohn@mattblaze
> Design as if your users'
> lives might depend on
> your choices.
Thank you -- you've just made the case that software that isn't traditionally thought of as safety-critical software can indirectly become so.
This is something that's been bouncing around in my head for months, but it never coalesced into an example quite so plain and graspable as what you've described here.
Douglas Patriarche@mattblaze Years ago when I worked at RIM, my dev team was responsible for (among other things) the “find my lost phone” feature. Out of the gate we got an unexpectedly large amount of traction in Venezuela. Looking into why, we found that people were buying BlackBerries to give to their children, so that if they were kidnapped they could geolocate them. We developed the feature to find lost phones, but discovered we were saving kids’ lives.
Clive Thompson
FinNicky 🇨🇦Hello @dpatriarche
Ex-RIM/BB (I still expect that to autocorrect).
Debora Weber-Wulff@dpatriarche @mattblaze
Of course the technology has led to things like airtags that are used to control people and stalk them. It has led to people getting killed because they were found. Technology has at least two sides to it and not all are purely positive. It is important to think through how new technology could be used not only for good, but also for evil and build it so the bad stuff is dammed and the good stuff can flow.
Of course the technology has led to things like airtags that are used to control people and stalk them. It has led to people getting killed because they were found. Technology has at least two sides to it and not all are purely positive. It is important to think through how new technology could be used not only for good, but also for evil and build it so the bad stuff is dammed and the good stuff can flow.
ketchup71@WiseWoman @dpatriarche @mattblaze It will never cease to amaze me why this AirTag thing backfired as it did. Americans are ok with gun for everyone, even if this implies the possibility of using guns in crimes, but when someone comes up with a technology to find your stuff (and, as far as I know, Tile was there before Apple), everyone tells me you can do bad things with it, therefore the tech is evil.
(Not your words, I know.)
But I agree: 2+ sides…
(Not your words, I know.)
But I agree: 2+ sides…
@ketchup71 @dpatriarche @mattblaze
Tech is not either good or evil! We need, however to not just look at the good, but to understand the evil and find ways of lessening or blocking it. If the evil is too bad, then maybe it is not worth the good.
Tech is not either good or evil! We need, however to not just look at the good, but to understand the evil and find ways of lessening or blocking it. If the evil is too bad, then maybe it is not worth the good.
@WiseWoman @dpatriarche @mattblaze I agree.
However, the problem is to decide when the bad outweighs the good.
Example: I’m an old white guy in Europe. I have no problem with stalking. More to the point: it’s not probable that I would be stalked. But I forget my keys (the old in owg). Now I can’t find them, because stalking is a thing in the US.
(Yes, it’s a thing globally, but to different extends.)
Frustrating. Mostly, because I agree with you.
@WiseWoman @dpatriarche @mattblaze In a perfect world, we would have numbers to decide. We would help victims, mostly by rooting out the underlying social problems (which is the way to go, in my eyes).
It is not feasible in our world. But it’s frustrating that the way we present incidents steers our decisions. There are stalkers, car thieves, a guy who murders car thieves. All enabled by AirTags. (We say.)
And we blame AirTags.
Better story, I guess. 😢
It is not feasible in our world. But it’s frustrating that the way we present incidents steers our decisions. There are stalkers, car thieves, a guy who murders car thieves. All enabled by AirTags. (We say.)
And we blame AirTags.
Better story, I guess. 😢
K-ZO da Snowman
mutual@mattblaze hate to Well Actually you but Twitter actually has its origins in TextMob which was used to coordinate protests and early twitter engineers came out of Indymedia spaces https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3485447.3512282
@mutual_ayyde interesting history!
Knut Morå@mattblaze
How much of this was due to technical features of Twitter vs the company deciding to not cooperate with governments? Their dms were not encrypted either
How much of this was due to technical features of Twitter vs the company deciding to not cooperate with governments? Their dms were not encrypted either