The one item that is a really sticky issue in terms of social media sites is the policing of what is posted. Who decides what is hate speech and what is mis-information? When does this type of control become censorship? Who decides what is one's right to free speech or inflammatory hate? Especially when we have a President that fires up the violent far right with his rhetoric and his personal propaganda network (Fox) to spread his "alternate facts".
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About the browser wars - I am sure Google purposely causes Gmail to load slowly on Firefox.
I remember when Microsoft promised users of Netscape would have "a jolting experience".
Google has pulled it off but the world remains unaware.
9
On the topic of intrusive internet ads, the NYTimes digital version is as 'guilty' as any pay news site: the follow me down the scrolled page, the constant barrage of ads from companies I could not care less about, et al.
When I get a chance to read the NYTimes in print, the ads are there, but they don't follow me around and pop up on every page...this online ad stuff is annoying at best, and intrusive and way overdone, usually. And, the digital subscription ain't cheap.
Get a grip on the ads, esp the continual stuff that has zero interest to me.
78
I do like Firefox! With Chrome you are still being spied on by Google, no?
9
Online advertising is tech that definitely needs to be fixed. At the bottom of this article, I was served an ad with a picture of a wireless mouse and a USB dongle with the headline, "Seniors-Still Have a Landline? If you still have a landline, you need to search this new technology."
A) I'm not a senior
B) A wireless mouse is not new tech nor has anything to do with a landline.
Don't get me started on being served ads when I'm a paying NYT subscriber.
39
It's unfortunate that even some otherwise respectable news organizations like CNN have turned to putting sneaky auto play video ads on their web pages. The ad waits till you scroll down the page and then starts, so you're not able to pause it before it starts to play. This is so off putting that I've stopped visiting those sites.
23
On my Android Wifi tablet, with my paid digital sub to the NYT, still auto-playing video ads. Annoying. I can only imagine how those using phones with data limits must feel.
25
Brian, please make sure your bosses at The Times read your article. The video ads in the NY Times smartphone app have gone out of control. Thanks to the ads, your app is responsible for a full 2/3 of my monthly data usage, well in excess of 1.5 GB. (I have the app set to download content only over WiFi, but while the editorial content obeys that setting, the ads ignore that setting and download themselves whenever and wherever I read the articles, including over cellular.)
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I always use Firefox in private browsing mode, with adblocker plus. I never let third parties set cookies and I always log in to websites by hand, using an email address at a domain I own. Never, ever log into a website using google or facebook or any other third-party accounts. Use VPN religiously.
I never see ads online, and web videos don't start unless I tell them to start. What's the problem? If you use Firefox and explore its privacy features, and really learn to prevent yourself from leaking personal information like a sailor on payday Friday night, you'll find evading the Chrome/Google/Facebook nexus of evil is very satisfying.
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How does one fix this technology when Google takes the action of removing everything in my files that are dated prior to 9/30/2018??? How is that justified? They may have had to clean house but that was to be for "hate mail" not 70 year old woman's literature, news and billings for books and clothes etc., etc. Yet that is exactly what they did some time this summer. I went to look for an April shoe billing that did not exist in my file but it did at the company. When I asked it to be replaced, thinking it had been done by some silly hacker, it ended up in "spam." Google "upgraded" their programs last June and since then everything for me has been a mess. Half the lit items I get are primary; others are new. Since when are monthly items more important than those that come daily or weekly?? Facebook and GOOGLE need to just keep things simple and relatively the same. Much was of greater use 10 years ago when they had it simple to be chosen or deleted or filed as one wished and no one like them took it away for efficiency purposes. Whose efficiency?? Theirs or mine?? Tell them about it. Maybe they will improve things before I die. It would be nice. To find an email from my son or brother, I have to hunt them up. They don't show on the emails--just the political and others mentioned above. Helpful?? DUH!!!
5
How does Safari compare on privacy and security?
4
Telephone fraud continues unabated. Supposedly the FCC has told telecom providers to find a fix in 2019. We'll see how that goes.
Still, it's not just the FCC that has an indifferent attitude towards customer fraud. This past week my husband got easily half a dozen calls from "Apple" about his "new" phone. The problem is he and I have old-fashion flip phones—we don't even do text. He got tired of telling the callers this, so he called Apple directly and more than once. Their customer reps could not have cared less, telling him that someone was spoofing Apple and to just ignore the calls. I'm pretty sure the proper term is phishing. He explained that they should be concerned that Apple customers were being targeted, but I guess Apple has for so long felt immune to the scams common to Windows that they ignore the threat. Yet this morning I saw an article on a fake setup App for Amazon's Alexa on the Apple store site.
7
@Mary J, one of my jobs over the years was implementing a notification, or "autodialer," system for my organization, so this helps me see how these guys work.
Here's one example. With an autodialer, you provide a list of numbers to call, an automated message, and a caller ID. So one type of message I get at 414-777-7843 has a caller ID of 414-777-1234, which might kinda look like a neighbor. Except I presume they use this caller ID as part of their project to call all 10,000 numbers with a 414-777-xxxx format. Then when I answer (which I do sometimes, just for fun) a fairly sophisticated recorded voice comes online while they scramble to bring a human on.
There's probably more to it than that, but my point is what enables this is that the cost for an individual call is now approaching zero, and there seems to be little downside in calling thousands of possible numbers. So I agree, this is growing to be a major irritant, and this still should be on the "broken" list.
19
One commenter spoke of the rampant telephone fraud. I agree. Many of us have home sets with stored numbers. The most simple solution is for that type of device to ring only if a stored number is calling. If it is not, than the call simply goes to the answering unit with no annoying ring. Geez, this stuff isn’t rocket science. This is similar to the Do Not Disturb feature on the iPhone. I don’t expect the FCC to really ever do anything. Although one thing i did do. When the same number kept calling, I simply set up a forward for it, to the FCC telephone number. Let them be bothered.
13
I can't say I agree about Firefox. After the most recent update, it has been driving me batty. It redirects constantly, and there is no longer a way to prevent it from doing so. I click on a Times article on the home page, and I get Macy's or some bogus site promising free shipping. Just this week it started interfering with my ability to print from the Cooking site. I spend half my time closing windows I didn't open or finding work arounds. Fix one thing, mess up another?
5
@Janet -- Don't blame the browser. You have some sort of browser hijacker or malware infection at work there. Take it to a legitimate computer person and have it eradicated.
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The term “social media” may have been a worthy aspiration and occasionally deserves to be used. But overwhelmingly that technology is neither social nor media, as that word is used.
On the balance at this point in time these apps, etc., are “internet gossip.” We should consider using a more apt term.
5
@Bartlett Google and Facebook and probably others are a kind of pay for play. You get to use their products while they get your information, tracking history, who you do business with, who you visit, ... they sell it to third parties. ... that's it, a form of organized crime in a nutshell. You end up giving up your privacy. They are a step up (or down) from a protection racket and bootlegging.
5
Sorry we didn't see telephone marketing on the list of technologies in need of a fix. This massive invasion of privacy and channel for outright fraud is becoming exponentially worse while the FCC and FTC launch endless studies and "comment periods" designed to avoid concrete action. "Do not call" rules are a joke in the absence of robust enforcement. The search for a provider-focused technological solution will result only in another technology-based circumvention.
The woefully inadequate and rarely imposed fines for violation of existing rules function only as a cost of doing business and an encouragement of bad behavior, while fraudsters utilize spoofing technology to operate with impunity. Offer instead a substantial bounty to low-paid boiler room employees to identify their principals, and subject the latter to significant terms of incarceration.
45
I am a big fan of the Times’ tech coverage in general and Brian Chen’s columns in particular. That said, it’s a bit rich to criticize (justifiably) online ads when the Times’ own apps, for which I pay premium prices to deliver that content to my iOS devices, breaks the flow of that content with frequent, annoying ads - some of which cover or delay loading the articles I am trying to read.
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@Phil Christensen
I'll make this brief. For months I've been trying to get the Times to stop putting underwear ads on every single newsletter I get from them. Perhaps I mentioned the word underwear in a gmail at some time.
Once, commenting on a FB post, I jokingly said "I specifically requested NO DIAPERS in my newsfeed". I was bombarded with diaper ads from every possible direction for weeks afterward, for crying out loud.
BTW the Times has recently been tossing in women's underwear ads. I'm a male in my 60's. The irony is that I seldom even wear underwear. Yes, TMI, I know. But isn't TMI essentially what this topic is all about?
34
At least for ten years, I have created, produced and managed an ad-free educational website for children. One would think my grandmaloutunes.com site would be just what parents and adult role models are looking for. I am not trying to compete with big-marketing companies. All I am trying to do is teach children using musical strategies. When will our world awaken to the common sense and good uses of technology?
5
Meanwhile, on this site, an article I saved for later and read years ago still cannot be taken off my Saved for Later list by me or anyone in customer service. It surprises me how glitchy and bad this site is while it has reporters who cover tech so well.
20
Or how when you delete a saved item from your queue, nyt app automatically brings you back to the top, not where you were at when scrolling. I don’t understand why with NYT’s resources they can’t make this simple fix. Grr...
26
@Bridgman
Good point. Here's another: theres no 'front-of-the-house' way to search for or collate all of the comments an individual has left under their username. Why? But with a subpoena I bet all those comments could quickly and easily be supplied to Big Brother.
And lets not doubt for even a nano-second that this very site is tracking, charting, collating and selling our every move and click.
17
Reading this article I was struck by the irony of "disinformation sites" being banned from certain platforms, when at the same time we have a legitimate channel called "Fox News" masquerading as a news station. Why pretend that they're not spewing lies and hatred pratically 24 hours a day with a few notable exceptions? How does Fox differ from Infowars, other than it's a different medium and they have a variety of hosts? Where do you draw the line between Alex Jones, Janine Pierro, and whatever other disinformation channel there is that gets banned and these other two are not. It seems to me they all cross over into each other's lane all the time with the vitriol being a constant.
55
The elephant in the room is CO2 global warming, and the increasing bubbling of methane from a million sub-arctic lakes.
This is the tech that needs fixing.
21
@William, excellent point! Adding to it is that major tech companies and the servers that run data warehousing, social media, and the Internet burn a lot of electricity, and contribute to global warming!
Some companies, such as Apple, are committed to going 100% renewable and should be supported!
9
@Marsha Pembroke
"Some companies, such as Apple, are committed to going 100% renewable and should be supported!"
Apple, one of the world's most heinously deceptive polluters. Electronics reportedly make up over 70% of all the world's landfill waste.
6
You mention Firefox, but you really should be discussing how amazing 'Brave' browser is-- definitely the future of web browsing!
5
@farnita
Brave, like Epic Browser, has bundled with Google, so, be careful.
I found that eventually these independent, privacy-focused browsers tend to cave in to Google and enter into an agreement with them to somehow filter their searches through them. I don't claim to know how exactly they are doing it but they are linked, that I know.
Same with Firefox, by the way.
6
Good piece, but you missed DuckDuckGo--great search engine that, by design, doesn't track searches.
I downloaded Firefox's latest--but I found that it doesn't render many web sites very well (or, other way round, many web sites aren't optimized for it). Hate to say it, but Chrome still rules.
21
“Twitter came under fire for being slow to react to Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist”
Again, we look to private industry to heal social problems that Congress does nor dare approach, let alone fix. Issues surrounding the first amendment are always difficult and complicated, our legislators should bhe up to tackling difficult and complicated.
In the age of ciber-communication verbal-terrorism can at times do as much damage as physical terrorism. And the kind of “speech” that is imputed to to Lex Jones is more damaging and objectionable than the child pornography that is currently prosecutable.
3
@Sagredo
"And the kind of “speech” that is imputed to to Lex Jones is more damaging and objectionable than the child pornography that is currently prosecutable."
Thats quite a statement - and while I think I understand the overall rationale of your comment, I vociferously disagree 1000% with your closing line.
5