2 Matching Annotations
  1. Jan 2023
    1. one reason the Golden Age of Piracy remains the stuff oflegend is that pirates of that age were so skilled at manipulatinglegends; they deployed wonder-stories—whether of terrifyingviolence or inspiring ideals—as something very much like weaponsof war, even if the war in question was the desperate and ultimatelydoomed struggle of a motley band of outlaws against the entireemerging structure of world authority at the time.
  2. Nov 2020
    1. Facebook Inc. FB 0.73% is demanding that a New York University research project cease collecting data about its political-ad-targeting practices, setting up a fight with academics seeking to study the platform without the company’s permission. The dispute involves the NYU Ad Observatory, a project launched last month by the university’s engineering school that has recruited more than 6,500 volunteers to use a specially designed browser extension to collect data about the political ads Facebook shows them.

      I haven't seen a reference to it in any of the stories I've seen about Facebook over the past decade, but at it's root, Facebook is creating a Potemkin village for each individual user of their service.

      Not being able to compare my Potemkin Village to the possibly completely different version you see makes it incredibly hard for all of us to live in the same world.

      It's been said that on the internet, no one knows you're a dog, but this is even worse: you probably have slipped so far, you're not able to be sure what world you're actually living in.