"For example, I think Google [NZ] pays out about 95-97% of all the revenue that it earns [in "service fees" to the parent company] ... and FaceBook would be very similar, Uber would be. The percentages vary, but it's most of it, in all cases."
#NickMiller, Tax Justice Aotearoa, 2025
https://www.1of200.nz/podcast/1200-s2e160-big-tech-better-taxes
#podcasts #1of200 #TaxJusticeAotearoa #DataFarms #TaxAvoidance #Google #FaceBook #Uber
@jonathanharker
> I deleted mine today
I don't know if it will work on Discord, but I usually leave my accounts on DataFarms parked, with a Gone to Croatan note pointing to the fediverse, etc.
For context on "Gone to Croatan";
https://immediatism.com/archives/podcast/558-gone-to-croatan-by-hakim-bey
‘Across the globe biodiversity is under siege’ Irfaan Ali, Guyanese President.
Yet Trump and his fascist tech bros want to accelerate its end with data farms to strengthen their ultras totalitarian world order. All that will do is turn sustainable energy into fields of toxic waste and extreme climate chaos. Uniformity, Exclusion and Inequality is a death cult. It accelerates Entropy, as in useful resources into unusable resources. Who will stop them, once billions start dying? The people I reckon will want to tear them limb from limb even if to late just to feel better about the great lie and steal they bought into! #EndOfEarth #UEI #EmpireIsNotGreat #DataFarms #EmpireIsSelfDestructive #EcocideEmpire
@bonfire
> We're tracking mockups and implementation progress here
FYI I'd love to help. But from Jan 1 2025 onwards, I refuse to do anything that requires logging in to GritHub. For the same reason I refuse to maintain an account on FarceBook.
Even reading GH pages on mobile is starting to require allowing this BorgSoft-controlled platform to run JS in my browser.
"As we become aware as a public we're putting pressure on our democratic institutions. We need new law, we need new regulatory regimes that interrupt and outlaw the key mechanisms of surveillance capitalism. Including the very principles of taking human experience unilaterally and turning it into data ... do we want a dominant capitalism that trades in behavioural futures?"
#ShoshanaZuboff, 2019
#podcasts #Vox #RecodeDecode #SurveillanceCapitalism #DataFarms #platforms
"Maybe we should stop conversing in the billionaire machine where they make money out of our arguments ... Data is the new f'ckn oil. Like, where are these people getting their money from? Our behaviour. They're mining our behaviour like oil."
#BlindBoy Boathouse, 2025
https://shows.acast.com/blindboy/episodes/the-science-of-happiness-with-an-expert-psychologist
"The universe of firms could be limited to the largest social media companies, such as Facebook, Google/YouTube, Twitter, and TikTok. Perhaps it could also be extended to other large technology companies, such as Amazon or Apple, or other critical companies in the internet stack."
#NathanielPersily,
#JoshuaATucker, 2021
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-to-fix-social-media-start-with-independent-research/
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"Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are structured around a social graph in which users follow and are followed by other users. In turn, the content we see depends on what’s shared in our network."
#ZeveSanderson, #SolomonMessing,
#JoshuaATucker, 2024
Ugghh, no. This was true of all 3 DataFarms when they first started. But all 3 have been inserting posts into people's feeds from outside their social graph for years.
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Thinking about this some more, the story I tend to tell about moving from the DataFarms to the fediverse is a political-economic one. About who's in control of the social web - and the development of digital tech in general - and who gets to make money from it.
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I'm in two minds about public media outlets like RNZ publishing the video they produce on YouRube;
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCp4OXwfZE1SaCQ4jRAuaoXQ
It makes sense for publicly-funded media to publish anywhere that members of the public might be, especially where we don't have to pay. In fact, any media funded 100% with public money ought to be under a CreativeCommons BY-SA license, or even placed in the public domain. So *anyone* can publish it, anywhere they like.
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"The legal basis that X asserts in the filing is not terribly interesting. But what is interesting is that X has decided to involve itself at all, and it highlights that you do not own your followers or your account or anything at all on corporate social media."
#JasonKoebler, 2024
Governments and other public interest institutions, take note.
"Around four billion users use one of Meta’s products every month; that’s half all the humans on earth, or around 75% of all the people in the world aged 15 or older."
https://werd.io/2024/the-two-fediverses
Cripes, that's sobering. If Meta decides to stuff something down the memory hole, much of the world won't know about it. ZuckerBorg really is Big Brother.
Some intriguing coverage of the issues around newsrooms using #MOLE like ChatGPT;
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/mediawatch/audio/2018951651/mediawatch-the-good-and-bad-of-ai-in-news-advert-aggravation
One danger that's not discussed is core news media workflows coming to depend on yet another set of remote services offered by DataFarming corporations.
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@Shrigglepuss
> "it doesn't have to be this way"
Of course. We (all of us) are building the fediverse, we can determine everything about it.
But precisely because of this, changing things requires finding broad consensus on what to change and how. Nothing changes here by putting pressure on central authorities, as it can on corporate #DataFarms, because there aren't any.
So... what do you propose?
"Meta, the global behemoth that owns Facebook and Instagram, is putting a stranglehold on recommendations in user feeds that contain political content.
The move, signalled in February, applies to Instagram and Threads, and will eventually extend to Facebook."
https://omny.fm/shows/the-front-page-1/8-april-political-content-mix-1
#podcasts #TheFrontPage #NZHerald #SocialMedia #DataFarms #Meta
#DataFarms like FarceBook or Xitter are like one-party states. Like the rise of Weibo and WeChat in China, they enhance people's ability to express themselves, but only within the limits set by a single, centralised leadership.
The fediverse is more like a multi-party Parliament. People's freedom to express themselves still has limits, but they can choose a leadership (admins and mods) that reflects their values and beliefs.
#CaseyNewton also has some valid criticisms of the generative #AI trend;
"... its rise has led to a flood of AI-generated spam that researchers say now outperforms human-written stories in Google search results. The resulting decline in advertising revenue is a key reason that the journalism industry has been devastated by layoffs over the past year."
https://www.platformer.news/taylor-swift-deepfake-nudes-x/
Of course this is just finishing off a dying ad-funded journalism model decimated by recommendation media #DataFarms.
"In social media, creators maintain programming power over what gets seen and when. But in recommendation media, the platform is always in control."
#MichaelMignano, 2022
https://scribe.rip/the-end-of-social-media-a88ffed21f86
This distinction between "recommendation media" (ie the #DataFarms) and "social media" (eg the fediverse) is a useful one. But I find it weird that in mid-2022 this guy is praising DataFarming algorithms as a good thing. I suspect this might be an industry puff piece, rather than genuine opinion.
As the countdown to 2024 begins, here's a recap of some of the books #openhumanitiespress has published in 2023. Beginning with this from January:
Data Farms, ed. by Tsvetelina Hristova, Brett Neilson and Ned Rossiter.
Like all OHP books, Data Farms is available #openaccess:
http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/data-farms/
What's at stake in naming #datacentres as #datafarms. These installations are essentially hangars packed with #computers. They congregate #servers, switches and wires that facilitate the storage, processing and transmission of #data in high volumes and at fast speeds. Data centres present a scale of operations, potentially planetary in scope, that intensifies and multiplies the productive and extractive capacities of #digitaltechnologies.
The economic advantages to parties with servers in these installations derive not only from opportunities for networking but also from inputs to client machines that may be situated at vast distance. Yet data centres have precise locations...
"... Google, which recently settled another case over its app store brought by US states. The company is also facing a federal lawsuit over its advertising business and has found itself in the crosshairs in Europe, where it has been fined billions in monopoly cases.
The government has asked for 'structural relief' if it wins - which could mean the break-up of the company."
#NatalieSherman, #BrandonDrenon, 2023
