1. The Reach saga rumbles on
I’ve banged on about the parlous strategy of Reach plc before, but the departures from its senior editorial ranks will continue to make a bad strategy worse. What makes this situation more difficult for the company is its board, which is free of any experience in newsrooms or in audience development, the two key product areas which are intended to drive its growth.
This lack of experience at board level plus the exodus of senior editorial talent will mean that there is zero experience of what it’s like to go through as Google traffic declines. Reach is in a doubly difficult position than most publishers, as its brands are largely local, and local news benefited for a time from Google’s largesse to a degree that nationals didn’t. I doubt this message is filtering through to the boardroom, who don’t have the right experience to dig themselves out of the hole they’re in.
2. The sanewashing of RFK
One of the great failings of American publishing is on full display currently, as publications struggle to describe the latest crop of appointments to the incoming Trump clown car as what they are: disastrous for America and the world. Benjamin Mazer at The Atlantic highlights some of the more egregious examples connected to Robert F. Kennedy Jr, a notorious spreader of conspiracy theories and lies about science who will now oversee public health. At least he’s not a sex trafficker.
3. Labour’s capitulations continue
You would think an incoming administration with a whacking great majority would have confidence, but Labour appears to be approaching all aspects of policymaking with the timidity of someone who squeaked an election. There is so much wrong with technology secretary Peter Kyle’s claim that companies like Facebook, Google, et al. need to be treated with the same approach as nation states rather than, you know, them having to be subject to law like everyone else.
It would be pathetic if it weren’t serious. Kyle appears to have read the section of Yanis Varoufakis’ Technofeudalism which looks at the power of these companies while ignoring the impact they will have on freedom and democracy.
4. File under “headlines I wish I had written”
This article from Timothy Snyder on Trump’s appointments is a good read, but the headline – “Decapitation Strike” – made me catch my breath. A decapitation strike is a military strategy aimed at removing or incapacitating the leadership or command structure of an enemy. This involves targeting high-ranking officials, such as political leaders, military commanders, or key decision-makers, with the aim of causing disarray, disrupting coordination, and undermining the enemy’s ability to organise and respond effectively.
Is there a better description of what Putin has achieved with his covert support for Trump? Trump’s ties to Putin were well known, but now the mask is off.
5. Conspiracy theory is a danger to democracy
Everyone knows the role conspiracy theories spread by social media played in Trump’s election, but this isn’t stopping the left eschewing the reality-based community too. Honestly, there is enough wrong with the world without having to invent anything.
6. All this paints a picture
One of the challenges for us on the more radical wing of politics is to understand that the landscape has changed, and what it means for us. It’s no longer business as usual – we are finally getting to the point of the internet revolution where the new forms and norms which are native to the net emerge, rather than the period when a new medium apes the old forms.
One of those new forms – relating back to the point about technofeudalism – is the company which is too big to fail, and Cory Doctorow once again skewers an example of this in the shape of Lincare, the company which supplies almost every oxygen molecule used in US healthcare. Lincare practices illegal tactics with impunity.
And before those of us in the civilised world of socialised medicine get too pleased with ourselves: the main supplier of oxygen to the NHS is BOC. Linde Group own BOC. Guess who Linde Group also own?
7. It’s not all doom and gloom
I try not to use services from a single supplier, but the way Apple, Google and Microsoft set up their operating systems doesn’t make it easy. This is particularly true for storage on iOS, where Apple makes it effortless to use iCloud Drive while making it a little more difficult to use, say, Dropbox to the full extent it could. Thankfully, the venerable Which? magazine is taking Apple to court over it.
8. Agatha all along, all along
Agatha All Along didn’t grab me at first. I took my usual approach of watching three episodes then dumping it. But something got me watching it again, and I’m glad I did because the last two episodes were absolute hum dingers. Chuck Jordan wrote a great piece about it (contains big spoilers), and I agree with him: it managed to escape the curse of Marvel TV series, in that it felt like it was an interesting self-contained series full of good ideas, which wasn’t there simply to tee-up a movie.
9. Mozilla is a mess
At exactly the point where we need a tech company which is not some kind of play for absolute authoritarian power, Mozilla is all over the place. Please, people, pull out of this crazy tail spin.
10. Mac nerd article of the week
Of course, it’s Howard, writing in detail about the history of Apple’s low speed ports, including ADB and USB. I had forgotten that ADB wasn’t supposed to be hot-swappable, possibly because I spent my entire life while working with it completely ignoring that and just plugging stuff in live.