What will remain of us is books

29 October 2024
Reading lists, books, and imagination
Keith Haring graffiti art, exhibited in Glasgow 2024

My amazing and wonderful daughter recently started college. She’s doing a lot of political science. She’s also chugging a lot of coffee and writing a lot of political science essays the day of the deadline.

*sobs emotionally* that is definitely my kid *sob* #proudmum

Having safely delivered the Lisan al Gaib into adulthood, I decided it was time to do something which might not seem like a lot to you, but for me was quite momentous:

I decided that it was time to pass on some of the books I’ve been keeping on my shelves, for her, waiting until the time was right.

And now that’s done.

So here is what I passed on.

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Say their names.

14 October 2024
ex-oss

In recent days I have been asked for my thoughts on the Matt-ers which have unfolded in the WordPress community, which was my home for nine years.

For those not au fait, as it says on the part of my CV where I desperately try to pretend that any prospective employer is interested in it, which I can assure you they’re not:
Open Source Community Contributor and Volunteer
2011-2020
I was an enthusiastic contributor to several OSS project communities, helping
community members to understand privacy, accessibility, and various regulatory
changes impacting the field. I delivered 32 conference talks across eight countries,
trained thousands of professionals, was a local meetup organiser in two cities, was a co-organiser for four multi-day conferences, and I helped build the WordPress 4.9.6 privacy suite to ship privacy tools to 40% of the sites on the open web.

As some of you may recall, all this counted for was being on the receiving end of some of the worst behavior in the WordPress project.

The reason I am still here though, strong and better and smiling despite all of that, is because I was also on the receiving end of some of the best people in the project.

Some of them were, and always will be, the best friends I have ever had in my life. They know who they are. They are, as Elbow once sang, the stars that I navigate home by. They gave me that light.

It’s thanks to the light that I can share my thoughts on what, in my view, really Matt-ers here, and that is this: Read More

LI + AI = GIGO

19 September 2024
Privacy

Please enjoy this article in The Stack, in which two Glaswegians, including yours truly, sit in the late summer sun and have a natter about the news that LinkedIn has not only decided to train its AI on its users’ data and content, but has actively opted-in UK users without their knowledge or consent.

As the article notes, the active nonconsensual opt-in does not apply to people in the EU, EEA, and Switzerland. Why?

We’ll put it this way: 404 subsequently reported that LI is also doing the active nonconsensual opt-ins to users outside those regions, not just the UK.

You might think the reasoning here is obvious, meaning that it’s based in the EU corpus of data protection law, but I suspect it might well be something else.

You see, the more you try to use LinkedIn for the things you actually need it to do, the more of its nonsense it pushes at you. It’s how you find yourself discovering yet more layers of nonsense that reveal some quite worrying problems with the site’s architecture. Those problems may well render LI’s AI vision impossible in Europe. I’ll explain why.

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The master’s tools will never advocate for digital rights

10 September 2024
UK policy

DFF’s new leadership model – redistributing decisions and power

I rejoiced as I read about how the Digital Freedom Fund has revamped its leadership model. Wonder of wonders, a team of people whose mission is to support grassroots digital rights work realised that they cannot carry out that mission by mirroring the very power structures they work to fight.Ā 

So, out went the traditional hierarchical ladder, where everyone feeds up the triangle to senior executives with more power. In comes a flat circular leadership model, where everyone works together to run the organisation. Out goes a system where accountability to management works one way, only, in an unequal relationship. In comes a system which ensures accountability by empowering staff to get the best out of each other, not the worst. Out goes one leadership voice who filters communication up to and down from the Board, whilst taking credit for all the work, and occasionally lying through their teeth about those staff too. In comes many people who are permitted to speak for their own accomplishments, and tell the unfiltered truth too.

Who knows, that just might start to catch on across the wider digital rights movement, as it begins to dawn on boards that the inequitable organisations they’re governing are no different than authoritarian states and big tech. Aside, of course, from the sub-living wage salaries.

One of these things is not like the other

10 September 2024
Policy
Parliament, 13 June 2022. It was actually a beautiful day but I'm loyal to the black and white aesthetic

There was a cracking episode of the Regulate.tech podcast published last week. If you weren’t aware of the podcast, it’s an insider’s view of how the tech policy sausage gets made, by someone who has made it on both sides of the table, that being Richard Allan (currently of the House of Lords, formerly of FB), ably assisted by Nicklas Lundblad of various works.

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Back to school

20 August 2024
Musings
Glasgow's Wellington statue, being Ukrainian. My heart.

A brief personal announcement. Because your late forties are apparently your new mid twenties, I’m delighted to be spending the next nine months doing my MSc in Law, Technology, and Innovation at the University of Strathclyde here in Glasgow, thanks to a generous full scholarship from Scotland’s own The Data Lab Academy.

This came up out of nowhere, very fast, but it’s a lovely surprise to be sure.

I will still be working to pay the bills, of course, so get in touch with your gigs and contract projects for between now and May 2025. (Remote, obviously, and flexible around my course attendance: my standards for who I do and don’t work with are here.)

This is a nice destination to reach after a disrupted journey. Ten years ago I did a PG Cert in Internet Law at Strathclyde, which was roughly halfway to a Masters, but certain jealous and unsupportive individuals at home wouldn’t allow me to finish the task. So it’s great to start fresh, with those obstacles now thankfully either dead or outta my way, and get it right this time.

How Labour already fixed the biggest policy problem in tech

17 July 2024
UK policy
Palace of Westminster. Photo by me, Feb 2020

There is so much to say about what has taken place over the past eight weeks in the UK. I’d probably find it easier to write about those things if I wasn’t just taking the time to enjoy the feeling of fourteen years of stress evaporating off of my shoulders. Seriously, I’ve been the smiling sunglasses emoji since the 22nd of May. šŸ˜Ž

I want to break my mellow vibe for just a few minutes, though, to offer my quick take on the King’s Speech, which took place this morning. The Speech itself, of course, is just the pomp and circumstance in front of the policy slate which Labour has prioritised for their earliest days in government.

My take isn’t about the policy particulars per se: it’s about the bigger picture. And that is why I, the sunglasses emoji, am rejoicing today, as should you.

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So you’ve got to read a 1200 page consultation

14 May 2024
UK policy

I recently enjoyed a beer with an Australian colleague who also works in the digital rights field. “Hold my beer” is, in fact, my running joke with Australians, as we both work through our bemusement on how the UK and Australia are constantly trying to outdo each other with hopelessly bad internet legislation that achieves absolutely nothing. To wit, my colleague observed that the Australian regulatory vision, as exemplified by the eSafety Commissioner, is to fix all the problems on the internet and clean it up by…

drum roll please…

overwhelming people with documents.

Yeah baby, that’s the ticket right there.

I thought of that last week, when Ofcom dropped yet another one of their consultations on their enforcement of the Online Safety Act, with still more coming down the road.

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