I think most people probably know what a prequel and a sequel are but for the sake of clarity the former is a movie set before another, and the latter is a movie set after another. However I recently discovered there are two other terms which I find interesting, "midquel" and "interquel" which you can probably guess what they mean but again, for the sake of clarity, the former is a movie set during the timeline of another movie, and the latter is a movie set between the timelines of two existing movies.
These two concepts have made me think about timelines in fiction, and the fixed nature of established events. When it comes to expanding the universe of existing fiction, you are restricted by these events unless you choose to alter the events through a retcon [Retroactive Continuity] or unless you have a plot device in place like Doctor Who which can employ time travel and the impact of it. That restriction can make it very difficult to expand the universe unless sufficient ambiguity was written into the original script to provide flexibility.
Those are a lot of "unless" caveats however. There is of course quite literally another angle that you can approach this idea from. There is an episode of The Simpsons called "Trilogy of Error" which follows three members of the Simspon family, Homer, Lisa, and Bart, in that order, recounting their experience of a given day. All three stories show the events of the same day from the perspective of the characters which overlaps with the other characters stories but often in ways not realised until later or until all viewpoints have been shown.
There are also 2 tropes found in writing which play with this concept they are the "P.O.V. Sequel" and the "Perspective Flip" which are closely related yet distinct concepts. The former details events from an established timeline from the point of view of other characters part of that timeline but detailing events that add to the story but don't tell a separate story - much like the episode of The Simpsons mentioned above, or as TVTropes focuses on, The Lion King 1.5. The Perspective Flip however actively attempts to change your perspective of the original story, trying to make you hate the protagonist or characters close to them, for example the movie 'Maleficent' retells the story of Sleeping Beauty in such a way that you are intended to gain empathy for her and kindle your indignation for Aurora's father King Stefan.
This whole idea however has left me wondering which movies I would like to see Perspective Flips made from. I'm a fan of Harry Potter as my twitter suggests, and I have thought about the main story and which characters from it I would have liked to see their point of view shown; I think the only contenders in that regard would be Draco Malfoy and Neville Longbottom. The former has depth that was never explored and could be used as a device for the author to explore the nature versus nurture debate. Draco remains a divisive character and some details revealed since by J.K. Rowling haven't been embraced with open arms by all, some readers/viewers still want to hold onto the hardened image of Draco and deafen themselves to anything that contradicts that image. As for the latter, Neville played a pivotal role throughout the story particularly in the later books/movies which was never explored in great detail. Those that haven't read the books or explored the cannon of the Harry Potter universe very far will likely be blissfully unaware that Neville was thought to be a "spare" chosen one, some even argued that he is the chosen one and Harry wasn't. There are a plenitude of fan theories like these which explore these ideas, one thing is clear from the books however, there is a lot of ambiguity that centres around Neville, enough that a story could be written about him and his journey, it might not last seven books or eight movies, but it would be interesting to read and see.
Fake News
Facebook has come under a lot of fire in the wake of the US election for the abundance of fake news that circulated on the social network. CEO Mark Zuckerberg originally defended the organisation's lack of action against the issue by basically saying "it's not an issue" - something he quickly learned was the wrong thing to do when it comes to investors and their perceptions of the company. Some news outlets went so far as to declare that Mark Zuckerberg is now a politician whether he likes it or not, he may not hold any public office but he holds the profile and influence associated with many that do and as such garners the same level of scrutiny.
When it comes to news online there are basically three types of fake news. The first is satire, which is purveryed by the likes of the Onion. In this case the websites produce news stories that are not intended to be true but the sites themselves make that somewhat ambiguous to first visitors, instead keeping the disclaimer elsewhere on the site. This form of news while sometimes misleading isn't a prevailing problem. Those news outlets that carry "real" news stories are for the most part aware of satirical sites such as this and don't use them as sources.
The second type of fake news online is the far-fetched news sites, these also form a type of satire, but in this case the stories reported are meant to be so far fetched it should be obvious immediately that they are hyperbole. These are harder to pin down to individual sites as they often exist on third party sites, content management systems like Blogger and Wordpress rather than websites dedicated to them. These stories, while also misleading, aren't a real concern either to mainstream media and reputable news outlets. Anyone with an ounce of sense can see these stories aren't serious.
The third type is the hardest to identify and pose the most difficult to tackle - news knowingly false when written. You can interpret this in many ways, some would call it propaganda, but often times it doesn't conform to an overall narrative. This type of news is primarily written as click bait, intended to increase page impressions either for the purpose of marketing a website or to make money through cost-per-impression ad services. These news stories are knowingly false when they are written. From celebrity rumours which were completely made up on the spot by the writer, to stories that 'could be true' but have absolutely no evidence to support any of the claims.
This fake news is something that is hard to identify because it's not just restricted to obscure websites, it has arguably been used by many mainstream news outlets as well. Some major news outlets with a reputation of writing headlines obsequious to extremist views have used sensationalist claims for all manner of things. These outlets are well versed in the legality of their productions and know the fine line they can walk between what they can say without being held to account - or as some even go the lengths to writing articles entirely false with the intention of later writing minor feature retractions at a later date which 99% of their readers will overlook.
There are also ways to write articles entirely false and hide the fact. Protection of Sources in journalism is a concept many western countries share and provide strong legal precedents for; these protections allow news outlets to refuse to name sources of information passed to them, to that end it is possible to write a story that cites a "source" close to the matter and refuse to name that source; it's very hard to prove that the source didn't exist and the entire story was made up in the first place.
In a world dominated now by online media it is easier than ever to mislead, to produce rhetoric and hyperbole masquerading as journalism. The moniker of Investigative Journalism is stolen by many as an excuse to dismiss the lack of coverage of a story beyond their own networks, and ultimately the major danger with online news is virality. There have been a number of cases where fake news stories have made it into the mainstream media and carried as news reported as true simply because the original stories went viral and each news site along the way jumped on the band wagon resulting in minor yet credible news sites carrying a story which snowballs until major news sites also carry the same story.
Some people will argue it's all fun and games and people shouldn't take it seriously. The problem is there are people that do take it seriously, not the problem of fake news, but the stories they actually carry. "Common Sense" has been dead for a very long time. We live in the era of the idiot. People are gullible and while you may count yourself as one of those who still has common sense and that you would never be fooled by such stories, the problem is when those stories filter out and into mainstream media, like a Chinese whisper the rough corners are sanded off and glimmering threads of truth are woven into the stories until you reach a point where credible sources are used to back up claims that are anything but, yet when you read those claims you are lulled into a false sense of security.
I've covered this before in a previous post on the depth of reasoning most people have. How deep do you question what you learn? Most people abandon the infinite depth of reasoning of a child who repeatedly asks "why" to each answer until the respondent can go no deeper. Most people exist in a state where the deepest they go is 1 at most 2 levels before abandoning their pursuit. Take the device you are using right now to read this post and ask yourself successive questions and see how deep you can go before you can't answer, for example:
How are you accessing this site?
How is that device receiving the data?
How is that data transmitted?
How is that transmission powered?
How is that power generated?
How does that generation work?
How did the fuel get to that generator?
How was that fuel harvested?
How did that fuel get there in the first place?
How did people figure out that fuel could be used to generate power?
How did people discover power?
How is that power used by your device?
How is your device built?
How does each component work?
How is each component built?
This process is simply meant to highlight the fact that we use abstraction day to day to live our lives, we don't question deeper than we have to in order to get by and the same goes for all we see and do, and read. We only question it to a certain depth. We read a news story and at best we ask where the information came from, or how that information was collected. We don't question beyond those levels because it takes time and effort which we'd rather devote to other things.
When it comes to news online there are basically three types of fake news. The first is satire, which is purveryed by the likes of the Onion. In this case the websites produce news stories that are not intended to be true but the sites themselves make that somewhat ambiguous to first visitors, instead keeping the disclaimer elsewhere on the site. This form of news while sometimes misleading isn't a prevailing problem. Those news outlets that carry "real" news stories are for the most part aware of satirical sites such as this and don't use them as sources.
The second type of fake news online is the far-fetched news sites, these also form a type of satire, but in this case the stories reported are meant to be so far fetched it should be obvious immediately that they are hyperbole. These are harder to pin down to individual sites as they often exist on third party sites, content management systems like Blogger and Wordpress rather than websites dedicated to them. These stories, while also misleading, aren't a real concern either to mainstream media and reputable news outlets. Anyone with an ounce of sense can see these stories aren't serious.
The third type is the hardest to identify and pose the most difficult to tackle - news knowingly false when written. You can interpret this in many ways, some would call it propaganda, but often times it doesn't conform to an overall narrative. This type of news is primarily written as click bait, intended to increase page impressions either for the purpose of marketing a website or to make money through cost-per-impression ad services. These news stories are knowingly false when they are written. From celebrity rumours which were completely made up on the spot by the writer, to stories that 'could be true' but have absolutely no evidence to support any of the claims.
This fake news is something that is hard to identify because it's not just restricted to obscure websites, it has arguably been used by many mainstream news outlets as well. Some major news outlets with a reputation of writing headlines obsequious to extremist views have used sensationalist claims for all manner of things. These outlets are well versed in the legality of their productions and know the fine line they can walk between what they can say without being held to account - or as some even go the lengths to writing articles entirely false with the intention of later writing minor feature retractions at a later date which 99% of their readers will overlook.
There are also ways to write articles entirely false and hide the fact. Protection of Sources in journalism is a concept many western countries share and provide strong legal precedents for; these protections allow news outlets to refuse to name sources of information passed to them, to that end it is possible to write a story that cites a "source" close to the matter and refuse to name that source; it's very hard to prove that the source didn't exist and the entire story was made up in the first place.
In a world dominated now by online media it is easier than ever to mislead, to produce rhetoric and hyperbole masquerading as journalism. The moniker of Investigative Journalism is stolen by many as an excuse to dismiss the lack of coverage of a story beyond their own networks, and ultimately the major danger with online news is virality. There have been a number of cases where fake news stories have made it into the mainstream media and carried as news reported as true simply because the original stories went viral and each news site along the way jumped on the band wagon resulting in minor yet credible news sites carrying a story which snowballs until major news sites also carry the same story.
Some people will argue it's all fun and games and people shouldn't take it seriously. The problem is there are people that do take it seriously, not the problem of fake news, but the stories they actually carry. "Common Sense" has been dead for a very long time. We live in the era of the idiot. People are gullible and while you may count yourself as one of those who still has common sense and that you would never be fooled by such stories, the problem is when those stories filter out and into mainstream media, like a Chinese whisper the rough corners are sanded off and glimmering threads of truth are woven into the stories until you reach a point where credible sources are used to back up claims that are anything but, yet when you read those claims you are lulled into a false sense of security.
I've covered this before in a previous post on the depth of reasoning most people have. How deep do you question what you learn? Most people abandon the infinite depth of reasoning of a child who repeatedly asks "why" to each answer until the respondent can go no deeper. Most people exist in a state where the deepest they go is 1 at most 2 levels before abandoning their pursuit. Take the device you are using right now to read this post and ask yourself successive questions and see how deep you can go before you can't answer, for example:
How are you accessing this site?
How is that device receiving the data?
How is that data transmitted?
How is that transmission powered?
How is that power generated?
How does that generation work?
How did the fuel get to that generator?
How was that fuel harvested?
How did that fuel get there in the first place?
How did people figure out that fuel could be used to generate power?
How did people discover power?
How is that power used by your device?
How is your device built?
How does each component work?
How is each component built?
This process is simply meant to highlight the fact that we use abstraction day to day to live our lives, we don't question deeper than we have to in order to get by and the same goes for all we see and do, and read. We only question it to a certain depth. We read a news story and at best we ask where the information came from, or how that information was collected. We don't question beyond those levels because it takes time and effort which we'd rather devote to other things.
Moving Up
I am 28 years old. I was born in 1988. The Internet is a very interesting thing for me because it makes it easier than ever before to see what other people have done with their lives. I have been educated through Primary School, High School, College, and University. I have GCSEs, a Diploma, and a Degree to show for that. I have had quite a few jobs, some better paid than others but none were paid anything beyond what I would consider a modest or at best average wage. I've made a few investments over the years, played around with stocks and bonds but never made anything substantial from those apart from banking shares which I sold to partly fund my University education which I started in 2006 - I often look back at that and think how lucky I was that I had to sell them out of necessity as 2 years later those shares were pretty much worthless thanks to the financial crisis - and they are as yet to regain their pre-crash value.
As far as I am concerned as I have stated before I believe the "Middle Class" is a delusion and the reality is there's one question: "Could you quit your job and live the rest of your life on your own wealth without any assistance?" to which there are two answers, yes and no. If you answer yes then I consider you upper class, and if you answer no I consider you working class for the plain and simple reason you are expected to work - whether you do or not for various reasons is another matter entirely. By that definition I'd consider myself working class.
Within that broad definition I've experienced the extremes of that band, from literally having no home, to living a very comfortable life. Right now I'm somewhere in the middle, not living day to day penny to penny but not a million miles away from it either.
I've lived a life where I have been lucky to see both sides and find myself in the middle. I know things could be a lot worse and I know there's still scope for me to do better than I am, so I still have hope. When it comes to the idea that I or people like me could move from this class into the upper class however I take issue because I don't think that's really possible, or rather probable, and I don't think it ever was.
In my view the idea that you can work your way up to that, was a con that was sold to people to keep them content with being where they are - in many ways it epitomises the question based "You're free to leave at any time but do you mind telling us why?" type of scenario where you're told you have a choice and a chance but when you put that to the test there are many obstacles put in your path specifically designed to prevent you.
Now I know many will argue about whether you work hard enough for it etc. I've heard all those arguments before and to be honest the people that spout them tend to be people on the higher end of my definition of working class. It's never people who are upper class who have said that to me. In fact the people I have met who are upper class live quite frugal lives to the point where if you did not know about the money they had in the bank you'd think they were living day to day penny to penny - which is often what "new money" tends to reject.
"Old Money" is a term that is used to refer to people who have wealth that was made a long time ago, generally speaking several generations back in their family. These people come from money and they have been taught how to keep it - by avoiding spending it as much as they can. "New Money" are people who have recent wealth, either made in their own lives or in the previous generation or before. These are people who generally don't share that mentality either because they experienced what it was like not to have money and then want to lead a life of luxury where they spend in excess for themselves, or because they don't want their children to experience that hardship and essentially spoil their children in excess. Either way new money in most cases never holds onto it for very long.
That deals with those in the upper class, but for those in the working class who think they can work themselves into the upper class, that to me is very much a delusion. I have seen people who express the "milestones of the middle class" as life achievements - owning your own home, owning multiple cars, earning twice or more the average salary, sending children to public school [fee paying school for anyone outside the UK], going on multiple holidays annually, or owning a holiday home. To me this is all a delusion because the vast majority if not all of these things are achieved through debt. If you buy a house through a mortgage, that house isn't your asset until you've paid the mortgage in its entirety. If you want to sell before the mortgage is paid you can, and you repay the outstanding figure. Now the thing is you can't spend a house. So really that asset isn't liquid. That's wealth on paper not wealth in practice - potential wealth.
When it comes to the value of your home, the only reason to buy a house and pay the mortgage over the course of your life time is for the asset value at the end, at which point you will leave it to your children who will have the option of either selling it to get the money, or living in it. If they choose the latter then that wealth remains potential, not practical. If they choose the former then that wealth is swapped for yet another lifetime of debt. If you don't have children then when you reach the end of your mortgage and the asset is yours then you are left in a position where you need to make the same decision as your potential children would have. Do you sell the property to get the money? Or do you remortgage to unleash the equity? In the latter instance you swap the value of the house for yet another 25 years of debt which in essence means all you have done is regained the money you spent 25 years paying in the first place with a bit more on top due to the increased value of the home - which is entirely negated by the debt of the new mortgage.
If you choose to sell the property then you acquire the new capital value of the property in wealth which will be more than you paid for it in the first place so that is the only true profit. However, as other properties rose in value at the same time, or perhaps at a faster rate depending on where geography, then the chance of moving "up" into a larger house without another mortgage on top is slim to none. The option of moving down into a smaller house to be able to keep some of the profit liquid to spend is another choice, but again the value of that house then becomes paper based and potential value rather than liquid wealth, and the excess that you kept as money to spend will only be a profit if that amounts to more than you paid to the mortgage of the first house, which unless you downsized drastically, wouldn't be that likely.
So what does it actually achieve?
If you want to move from working class to upper class the only real paths to achieving that are through enterprise and investments. Property is not a viable investment unless you invest in it to provide an income - buy to let - as in that case the mortgage of the property is paid through the rent not through your own money. As for enterprise the potential to make money in business is something that never goes away but it is something that not everyone will want to pursue. You have to be driven if you want to start a business and make it work. If you don't put the effort in you want get a return. Business is one of the few ways to make money over time because just like renting out property, the source income ultimately is not your own money, but rather it is the income generated by someone else which in turn is passed to you. When you run a business yourself you can increase your salary accordingly as the business performs better causing your personal wealth to rise.
The question that sparked this whole post was whether or not it is possible to move from one class to another. I think the answer is technically yes, but I think that ultimately the vast majority never will. With 1% of the population sharing 95% of the wealth, and the other 99% sharing the remaining 5% of the wealth the odds are stacked against you. If I was to estimate for what percentage of the population could actually move from one class to another, I'd probably choose the figure of 1%, that only 1% of the population who fit the definition above of working class could actually move from working class to upper class [with a world population of 7 billion assuming a 99/1 split that would be 69.3 million people worldwide] - that's only those who could, that doesn't mean they will. The number that will, I would imagine, would be smaller still. [For the sake of argument if you say 1% again that would be 693,000 people worldwide will move from working class to upper class in their lifetime]. If you take a lifetime to be 70 years as most copyright law likes to assume then that amounts to 9,900 people around the world each year move from one class to the other.
As far as I am concerned as I have stated before I believe the "Middle Class" is a delusion and the reality is there's one question: "Could you quit your job and live the rest of your life on your own wealth without any assistance?" to which there are two answers, yes and no. If you answer yes then I consider you upper class, and if you answer no I consider you working class for the plain and simple reason you are expected to work - whether you do or not for various reasons is another matter entirely. By that definition I'd consider myself working class.
Within that broad definition I've experienced the extremes of that band, from literally having no home, to living a very comfortable life. Right now I'm somewhere in the middle, not living day to day penny to penny but not a million miles away from it either.
I've lived a life where I have been lucky to see both sides and find myself in the middle. I know things could be a lot worse and I know there's still scope for me to do better than I am, so I still have hope. When it comes to the idea that I or people like me could move from this class into the upper class however I take issue because I don't think that's really possible, or rather probable, and I don't think it ever was.
In my view the idea that you can work your way up to that, was a con that was sold to people to keep them content with being where they are - in many ways it epitomises the question based "You're free to leave at any time but do you mind telling us why?" type of scenario where you're told you have a choice and a chance but when you put that to the test there are many obstacles put in your path specifically designed to prevent you.
Now I know many will argue about whether you work hard enough for it etc. I've heard all those arguments before and to be honest the people that spout them tend to be people on the higher end of my definition of working class. It's never people who are upper class who have said that to me. In fact the people I have met who are upper class live quite frugal lives to the point where if you did not know about the money they had in the bank you'd think they were living day to day penny to penny - which is often what "new money" tends to reject.
"Old Money" is a term that is used to refer to people who have wealth that was made a long time ago, generally speaking several generations back in their family. These people come from money and they have been taught how to keep it - by avoiding spending it as much as they can. "New Money" are people who have recent wealth, either made in their own lives or in the previous generation or before. These are people who generally don't share that mentality either because they experienced what it was like not to have money and then want to lead a life of luxury where they spend in excess for themselves, or because they don't want their children to experience that hardship and essentially spoil their children in excess. Either way new money in most cases never holds onto it for very long.
That deals with those in the upper class, but for those in the working class who think they can work themselves into the upper class, that to me is very much a delusion. I have seen people who express the "milestones of the middle class" as life achievements - owning your own home, owning multiple cars, earning twice or more the average salary, sending children to public school [fee paying school for anyone outside the UK], going on multiple holidays annually, or owning a holiday home. To me this is all a delusion because the vast majority if not all of these things are achieved through debt. If you buy a house through a mortgage, that house isn't your asset until you've paid the mortgage in its entirety. If you want to sell before the mortgage is paid you can, and you repay the outstanding figure. Now the thing is you can't spend a house. So really that asset isn't liquid. That's wealth on paper not wealth in practice - potential wealth.
When it comes to the value of your home, the only reason to buy a house and pay the mortgage over the course of your life time is for the asset value at the end, at which point you will leave it to your children who will have the option of either selling it to get the money, or living in it. If they choose the latter then that wealth remains potential, not practical. If they choose the former then that wealth is swapped for yet another lifetime of debt. If you don't have children then when you reach the end of your mortgage and the asset is yours then you are left in a position where you need to make the same decision as your potential children would have. Do you sell the property to get the money? Or do you remortgage to unleash the equity? In the latter instance you swap the value of the house for yet another 25 years of debt which in essence means all you have done is regained the money you spent 25 years paying in the first place with a bit more on top due to the increased value of the home - which is entirely negated by the debt of the new mortgage.
If you choose to sell the property then you acquire the new capital value of the property in wealth which will be more than you paid for it in the first place so that is the only true profit. However, as other properties rose in value at the same time, or perhaps at a faster rate depending on where geography, then the chance of moving "up" into a larger house without another mortgage on top is slim to none. The option of moving down into a smaller house to be able to keep some of the profit liquid to spend is another choice, but again the value of that house then becomes paper based and potential value rather than liquid wealth, and the excess that you kept as money to spend will only be a profit if that amounts to more than you paid to the mortgage of the first house, which unless you downsized drastically, wouldn't be that likely.
So what does it actually achieve?
If you want to move from working class to upper class the only real paths to achieving that are through enterprise and investments. Property is not a viable investment unless you invest in it to provide an income - buy to let - as in that case the mortgage of the property is paid through the rent not through your own money. As for enterprise the potential to make money in business is something that never goes away but it is something that not everyone will want to pursue. You have to be driven if you want to start a business and make it work. If you don't put the effort in you want get a return. Business is one of the few ways to make money over time because just like renting out property, the source income ultimately is not your own money, but rather it is the income generated by someone else which in turn is passed to you. When you run a business yourself you can increase your salary accordingly as the business performs better causing your personal wealth to rise.
The question that sparked this whole post was whether or not it is possible to move from one class to another. I think the answer is technically yes, but I think that ultimately the vast majority never will. With 1% of the population sharing 95% of the wealth, and the other 99% sharing the remaining 5% of the wealth the odds are stacked against you. If I was to estimate for what percentage of the population could actually move from one class to another, I'd probably choose the figure of 1%, that only 1% of the population who fit the definition above of working class could actually move from working class to upper class [with a world population of 7 billion assuming a 99/1 split that would be 69.3 million people worldwide] - that's only those who could, that doesn't mean they will. The number that will, I would imagine, would be smaller still. [For the sake of argument if you say 1% again that would be 693,000 people worldwide will move from working class to upper class in their lifetime]. If you take a lifetime to be 70 years as most copyright law likes to assume then that amounts to 9,900 people around the world each year move from one class to the other.
The problem with trending topics
In its infancy Twitter created a widget for its website called trending which showed the 10 most common hashtags used at the time this was #useful but it was also #limited. For one, it only showed hashtags and didn't cover things which had not been tagged. The other thing that made it limited in its effectiveness was the fact that it was purely volume based. If enough people tweeted the same hashtag it would trend. With a handful of accounts tweeting the same thing in quick succession you could make something trend inorganically.
Over the years Twitter has refined how hashtags and trends work. The trending topics on Twitter no longer need to be hashtags, natural language is recognised. Hashtags still exist as an easy way to make tweets searchable in a feed. So too do cash tags or stock tags, like $AAPL which act like hashtags but are supposed to be used with the stock ticker of the company you want to tag - the site doesn't prevent you from using nonsense.
Beyond the natural language analysis, Twitter also expanded the scope of its trending algorithm to analyse the tweets being made. For something to trend it needs more accounts to tweet about it rather than a small number. You also need multiple plain tweets rather than one tweet simply being retweeted many times. Volume alone no longer makes a topic trend.
The trending algorithm is not without its limits however. It is still misused by some companies and organisations. Large corporations with many accounts for regional variations for example can engineer trending topics by coordinating the tweets of those accounts. One example of this can be seen in the UK with Heart Radio who regularly use this approach to make topics of their choosing trend. This behaviour however is actually against the rules of twitter, and if Twitter realises your actions as an individual you are normally suspended from the platform for doing it. With corporations like Heart if Twitter chooses they can sue for loss of revenue as this circumvents Twitter's sponsored trends feature and amounts to unsolicited mass advertisement on the platform - a.k.a. Spam.
Beyond these issues however there are instances where news items on popular sites are shared via twitter, where thousands of users click the tweet button on the website and post the tweet without editing it. This commonly results in all or part of the headline of the article trending. Personally I would prevent this from happening and amend the algorithm to only include tweets which have been authored by the user rather than using pre-written tweets and links like these. It's often the case that you see something trending, click the topic, and you see thousands of tweets all tweeting the same news story from multiple sources - something which I saw someone on twitter refer to as "churnalism" which I thought was apt and quite clever. I'd not heard of the term before but it can be seen quite clearly in these moments.
The problem I have with the way the algorithm works at the moment, is that it's hard, nigh on impossible to filter out all those tweets that are just the headline and the link, to get through to the tweets people have actually written about the content, or their reactions. In other words the third party content drowns out the social content. The tweets you see in those feeds are all pre-written by the third party media outlets, and very few, if any, tweets are actually what people on twitter have written in response - if you can manage to see them at all.
Over the years Twitter has refined how hashtags and trends work. The trending topics on Twitter no longer need to be hashtags, natural language is recognised. Hashtags still exist as an easy way to make tweets searchable in a feed. So too do cash tags or stock tags, like $AAPL which act like hashtags but are supposed to be used with the stock ticker of the company you want to tag - the site doesn't prevent you from using nonsense.
Beyond the natural language analysis, Twitter also expanded the scope of its trending algorithm to analyse the tweets being made. For something to trend it needs more accounts to tweet about it rather than a small number. You also need multiple plain tweets rather than one tweet simply being retweeted many times. Volume alone no longer makes a topic trend.
The trending algorithm is not without its limits however. It is still misused by some companies and organisations. Large corporations with many accounts for regional variations for example can engineer trending topics by coordinating the tweets of those accounts. One example of this can be seen in the UK with Heart Radio who regularly use this approach to make topics of their choosing trend. This behaviour however is actually against the rules of twitter, and if Twitter realises your actions as an individual you are normally suspended from the platform for doing it. With corporations like Heart if Twitter chooses they can sue for loss of revenue as this circumvents Twitter's sponsored trends feature and amounts to unsolicited mass advertisement on the platform - a.k.a. Spam.
Beyond these issues however there are instances where news items on popular sites are shared via twitter, where thousands of users click the tweet button on the website and post the tweet without editing it. This commonly results in all or part of the headline of the article trending. Personally I would prevent this from happening and amend the algorithm to only include tweets which have been authored by the user rather than using pre-written tweets and links like these. It's often the case that you see something trending, click the topic, and you see thousands of tweets all tweeting the same news story from multiple sources - something which I saw someone on twitter refer to as "churnalism" which I thought was apt and quite clever. I'd not heard of the term before but it can be seen quite clearly in these moments.
The problem I have with the way the algorithm works at the moment, is that it's hard, nigh on impossible to filter out all those tweets that are just the headline and the link, to get through to the tweets people have actually written about the content, or their reactions. In other words the third party content drowns out the social content. The tweets you see in those feeds are all pre-written by the third party media outlets, and very few, if any, tweets are actually what people on twitter have written in response - if you can manage to see them at all.
Be direct!
There's a question I hate, and it's often asked in situations where its aim isn't to see your creativity, it is simply to try and degrade you. The question is "If you could live your life over, what would you change or do differently?" - the reason I see this as a question that attempts to degrade you is because for one it's not a question you can give a conclusive answer to if you did take it at face value. There are very few decisions in life we can make at the time for which we will know the outcomes and consequences of them in advance. So by that logic, any answer you give on how you would change your life is only indicative of what you think happens when a specific choice is made.
The reason I see it as a misleading question, one that doesn't actually ask you to be creative but under the surface seeks the answer to a different question, is the simple conclusion that if you would change anything, it would be because you weren't content with the outcome of that decision. In other words, the question is really asking you is: "what mistakes did you make in your life and how could you have prevented them?"
I don't have a problem with the latter question if it is put to you directly. If there is openness and honesty about the fact that they want to know what mistakes you made, that you recognise in hindsight as a mistake, and that you know now how to prevent, then I would happily answer it. It's the fact that an underhand approach is being used which to me is dishonest, and anything but open. It's the fact that they want information from you that they don't believe you realise you are giving. To me that represents a level of scrutiny that is not warranted.
The question is asked in many different scenarios. Interviews for jobs are perhaps the most common but this question often arises in a social context, particularly with people you're only getting to know. I still find this disconcerting even in these scenarios because by my reasoning if you want to ask a question that you can't ask directly then you probably shouldn't ask that question. You're not in that place with that person yet. You haven't earned the trust or the respect to be able to ask that question and be given an honest answer. Trying to deduce information from people by asking questions that beat around the bush and try to piece together a larger picture is not something I find amusing.
I realise some people will think this post is about them. It's not. I'll answer one simple question you're probably afraid to ask directly - "Is this post about me?" - the answer is "No. If it was I would have spoken to you about it"
The same goes for anyone reading my tweets, if you think they're about you they aren't. If you know they are about you then they are. So unless you know for certain, don't make assumptions. I vent on twitter about a lot of people and a lot of things in life. Scroll back through my profile to before you met me and you'll see many more in the same vein.
The reason I see it as a misleading question, one that doesn't actually ask you to be creative but under the surface seeks the answer to a different question, is the simple conclusion that if you would change anything, it would be because you weren't content with the outcome of that decision. In other words, the question is really asking you is: "what mistakes did you make in your life and how could you have prevented them?"
I don't have a problem with the latter question if it is put to you directly. If there is openness and honesty about the fact that they want to know what mistakes you made, that you recognise in hindsight as a mistake, and that you know now how to prevent, then I would happily answer it. It's the fact that an underhand approach is being used which to me is dishonest, and anything but open. It's the fact that they want information from you that they don't believe you realise you are giving. To me that represents a level of scrutiny that is not warranted.
The question is asked in many different scenarios. Interviews for jobs are perhaps the most common but this question often arises in a social context, particularly with people you're only getting to know. I still find this disconcerting even in these scenarios because by my reasoning if you want to ask a question that you can't ask directly then you probably shouldn't ask that question. You're not in that place with that person yet. You haven't earned the trust or the respect to be able to ask that question and be given an honest answer. Trying to deduce information from people by asking questions that beat around the bush and try to piece together a larger picture is not something I find amusing.
I realise some people will think this post is about them. It's not. I'll answer one simple question you're probably afraid to ask directly - "Is this post about me?" - the answer is "No. If it was I would have spoken to you about it"
The same goes for anyone reading my tweets, if you think they're about you they aren't. If you know they are about you then they are. So unless you know for certain, don't make assumptions. I vent on twitter about a lot of people and a lot of things in life. Scroll back through my profile to before you met me and you'll see many more in the same vein.
Change
There aren't many things in life you can count on to remain the same forever. There's a comfort to be found in everything staying the same. There are proponents of change, myself included, who look to the future and look at how things can be made better. I know that at times it can seem like I focus on the negatives but the reason that's the case is because I see the negatives as the problems of the world that need to be addressed and solved. I don't see the positives as something that need to be changed, so I leave them be.
The thing about change though is that it often makes people uneasy because what they get is the unknown and if they didn't seek it out then they can fear it and reject it. This is an argument that is used by people on both sides. Those that oppose the change fight for the right to choose for themselves, and those that advocate the change fight for it because they are usually the ones that made the change, and their argument is usually that those who oppose it would never have chosen at all, they would have liked things to stay the same as they always were. Life isn't like that though. Life is a never-ending permutation of a simple algorithm:
Some of you will recognise this algorithm, even if you have no background in programming whatsoever you may be able to guess what is happening. This is the algorith for evolution. That's all there is to it. Changes are made ad infinitum. Each change when made is tested. That test is simply survival. That test has no bias of political, national, or even notional responses. The only criteria is that the process continues, that survival is maintained. You can see how this process can result in outcomes that may not be beneficial, less than ideal or even destructive changes can occur, so long as the process itself is uninterrupted those changes persist. In some cases it can be many cycles before the full impact of those past changes have their full effect.
Throughout life things change, if you constantly focus on your past iterations and try to recreate them then you deny the process of evolution. You actively try to impede it. If you feel like you live in an uncertain world, then it's time to stop looking back at the past and look to the future. Change is being cradled, the process is in effect, a new state will soon be created and if you don't help to create that state then you give up what little control you ever held. If you want to preserve what you hold dear then the only way to do it is to embrace change and integrate your beliefs and your experience into the change that is happening. If you oppose synergy you will be cut off and consign yourself to the past iterations of the process and be left behind.
When the Internet rose to prominence and the world began to embrace it, those businesses that opposed it were quickly forgotten. The birth of the World Wide Web could have heralded the end of many traditional establishments. The very existence of mainstream media and news outlets and the press were challenged. Some embraced the change, and "went digital" as they termed it back then. Those that did, exist to this day, and not only do they still remain heavyweights in their industry, but their scope and their audiences multiplied - and in many cases so did their revenue. There are many people who argue that the internet is not profitable to "old media" but I would argue those that struggle to make a profit online are those who approach the online world with an offline mentality. The online world is different, it represents the outcome of the evolutionary process, and the offline world represents the input. Those who have not changed their way of thinking are failing.
What this means for you and me, is simply that you must remember you past but you must accept that it is not your future. That may seem obvious to some but to others the idea that you can return to the past persists. Many people want to recreate a world that in truth never existed to begin with because what you remember is your perception of the world not the reality. When you were 5 years old and believed in Santa that belief was ultimately something that relied on your perception of the world. The person you are now is more knowledgeable than you were, and you know it's not possible to be 5 years old again and it's not possible to see the world through the eyes of a 5 year old again, but that doesn't stop people from trying.
Remember your past but be mindful of your future. Do not get lost reading the past and forget to write the future, or you'll wake up one day and realise half the book of your life is blank pages you can never write on because those are the days you stopped writing.
The thing about change though is that it often makes people uneasy because what they get is the unknown and if they didn't seek it out then they can fear it and reject it. This is an argument that is used by people on both sides. Those that oppose the change fight for the right to choose for themselves, and those that advocate the change fight for it because they are usually the ones that made the change, and their argument is usually that those who oppose it would never have chosen at all, they would have liked things to stay the same as they always were. Life isn't like that though. Life is a never-ending permutation of a simple algorithm:
start:
state = currentState
newState = change(currentState)
success = test(newState)
if success:
state = newState
goto start
Some of you will recognise this algorithm, even if you have no background in programming whatsoever you may be able to guess what is happening. This is the algorith for evolution. That's all there is to it. Changes are made ad infinitum. Each change when made is tested. That test is simply survival. That test has no bias of political, national, or even notional responses. The only criteria is that the process continues, that survival is maintained. You can see how this process can result in outcomes that may not be beneficial, less than ideal or even destructive changes can occur, so long as the process itself is uninterrupted those changes persist. In some cases it can be many cycles before the full impact of those past changes have their full effect.
Throughout life things change, if you constantly focus on your past iterations and try to recreate them then you deny the process of evolution. You actively try to impede it. If you feel like you live in an uncertain world, then it's time to stop looking back at the past and look to the future. Change is being cradled, the process is in effect, a new state will soon be created and if you don't help to create that state then you give up what little control you ever held. If you want to preserve what you hold dear then the only way to do it is to embrace change and integrate your beliefs and your experience into the change that is happening. If you oppose synergy you will be cut off and consign yourself to the past iterations of the process and be left behind.
When the Internet rose to prominence and the world began to embrace it, those businesses that opposed it were quickly forgotten. The birth of the World Wide Web could have heralded the end of many traditional establishments. The very existence of mainstream media and news outlets and the press were challenged. Some embraced the change, and "went digital" as they termed it back then. Those that did, exist to this day, and not only do they still remain heavyweights in their industry, but their scope and their audiences multiplied - and in many cases so did their revenue. There are many people who argue that the internet is not profitable to "old media" but I would argue those that struggle to make a profit online are those who approach the online world with an offline mentality. The online world is different, it represents the outcome of the evolutionary process, and the offline world represents the input. Those who have not changed their way of thinking are failing.
What this means for you and me, is simply that you must remember you past but you must accept that it is not your future. That may seem obvious to some but to others the idea that you can return to the past persists. Many people want to recreate a world that in truth never existed to begin with because what you remember is your perception of the world not the reality. When you were 5 years old and believed in Santa that belief was ultimately something that relied on your perception of the world. The person you are now is more knowledgeable than you were, and you know it's not possible to be 5 years old again and it's not possible to see the world through the eyes of a 5 year old again, but that doesn't stop people from trying.
Remember your past but be mindful of your future. Do not get lost reading the past and forget to write the future, or you'll wake up one day and realise half the book of your life is blank pages you can never write on because those are the days you stopped writing.
Late vs Too Late
The white rabbit forgot himself, and all desire not to be seen, preoccupied by the fact he was late, he became restless. He ran towards the rabbit hole, forgetting all manner of caution and precariousness, this was ultimately the reason Alice spied him and gave pursuit. The white rabbit was in a panic, brought on by a fixation on something that was going wrong. Alice on the other hand was in no panic, she was merely a curious child, who saw someone else in a panic and sought to help, ultimately that was the reason that led her to tumble down the rabbit hole.
When we are late we forget ourselves and our logic and reason, overcome with pressure of the impending, we rush. There's a fine line between late and too late however. The white rabbit was late, but he wasn't too late, he still believed he could salvage something. That mentality is one that I find fascinating because the line between late and too late, whilst very fine, and very clear in hindsight, is not one that is easy to predict. It is almost always the case that you do not know when the line will be crossed, until it has been crossed.
How late is too late? That is the question, and it doesn't apply only to schedules and organisation, it extends far beyond. When time and effort must be devoted to any endeavour, no matter the context, there is always a point at which time concedes defeat, and like a student with an exam paper rushing to fill in the last few answers before time is up, it is often the case that the paper is taken away or that we are forced to stop not by our own accord but by outside forces.
Alan Turing devised a number of tests and theories in his life that were devised to distinguish between human intelligence and artificial intelligence. The most famous of these tests is the imitation game, where 1 person interacts with 2 entities, one is a human, and one is a computer. The computer is said to pass the test if you are unable to determine it is a computer. While this test is fascinating it is not the area of his work which interests me most. Instead the area that interests me most is the Halting Problem - this is an area of study concerning machine intelligence. Specifically the halting problem tests whether a machine intelligence can identify when to stop, when faced with a problem for which a solution is certain to exist, but it is not clear how long the solution will take to find.
For example, assume I have a locked door and a key ring with an infinite number of keys, there exists one key in the set which will open the door. How many keys do you try before you stop? A program which defines only the objective to open the door will try every key until the end of time. A human will try so many keys before they stop. Even though the solution is certain, and the process is easy, the time taken eventually reaches a point where you realise the effort is not worth any potential gain. The halting problem is essentially the ability to make a program realise when late becomes too late. When the line is crossed. When it's not worth it to keep trying.
So the question is, how do you know when to stop?
When we are late we forget ourselves and our logic and reason, overcome with pressure of the impending, we rush. There's a fine line between late and too late however. The white rabbit was late, but he wasn't too late, he still believed he could salvage something. That mentality is one that I find fascinating because the line between late and too late, whilst very fine, and very clear in hindsight, is not one that is easy to predict. It is almost always the case that you do not know when the line will be crossed, until it has been crossed.
How late is too late? That is the question, and it doesn't apply only to schedules and organisation, it extends far beyond. When time and effort must be devoted to any endeavour, no matter the context, there is always a point at which time concedes defeat, and like a student with an exam paper rushing to fill in the last few answers before time is up, it is often the case that the paper is taken away or that we are forced to stop not by our own accord but by outside forces.
Alan Turing devised a number of tests and theories in his life that were devised to distinguish between human intelligence and artificial intelligence. The most famous of these tests is the imitation game, where 1 person interacts with 2 entities, one is a human, and one is a computer. The computer is said to pass the test if you are unable to determine it is a computer. While this test is fascinating it is not the area of his work which interests me most. Instead the area that interests me most is the Halting Problem - this is an area of study concerning machine intelligence. Specifically the halting problem tests whether a machine intelligence can identify when to stop, when faced with a problem for which a solution is certain to exist, but it is not clear how long the solution will take to find.
For example, assume I have a locked door and a key ring with an infinite number of keys, there exists one key in the set which will open the door. How many keys do you try before you stop? A program which defines only the objective to open the door will try every key until the end of time. A human will try so many keys before they stop. Even though the solution is certain, and the process is easy, the time taken eventually reaches a point where you realise the effort is not worth any potential gain. The halting problem is essentially the ability to make a program realise when late becomes too late. When the line is crossed. When it's not worth it to keep trying.
So the question is, how do you know when to stop?
I am a Snowflake
Privilege is when you have an unfair advantage, either knowingly or unknowingly, which you have never earned or had to fight for. There are those in society today who have lived privileged lives for too long, oblivious to those they oppress either through ignorance or through conscious choice. Progressive ideology has fought privilege, and those who are seen as liberal are often perceived to be weak, the term I see most often is "snowflakes" in the media. I have a few words to say on this.
First and foremost those who have been minorities, been oppressed, been marginalised, and generally been vilified by society are not weak. They know how to fight because they do it every day. They have survived injustice and fought against it. They have long-established communities and they have widespread support not just from their own communities but from those who are allies to them.
Secondly, while most liberals vehemently oppose conflict, and war, and violence, you should not take that as an indication that they will not fight. People protest peacefully because they are strong in numbers and they know how dangerous that strength can become when the bridles are broken and their fury is unleashed - it leads to seminal moments such as the Arab Spring, it leads to revolutions.
There are those who have lived lives of privilege who think they are part of a revolution with their populist ideals. They are not. What they are doing is fighting in a war they are close to losing because for a long time they never realised the war was happening to begin with because they never took anyone or anything serious until they reached the moment when their privilege began to crumble. The racists and zealots, the xenophobes and the bigots, the basket of deplorables have realised their power is weak. They hold on to the fantasy that they can "return" us to a time that never really existed to begin with. They have visions of the past that do not represent reality at all. Revolutions take steps forward not back.
Thirdly, and finally, is the term snowflake. This was a word they used do debase us, to try and weaken us. Let me remind you of one simple fact. When a snowflake is exposed to heat it melts and becomes water, one of the most powerful substances on this planet. All life depends on it, our bodies are mostly composed of it, and when it comes together it is an unstoppable force. So I take that word, and I reject the negativity they try to attach to it, and I attach this message. We are snowflakes and in the heat we will melt into water and together we will become the flood and we will drowned you and your hatred. We have been fighting all our lives against inequality, against discrimination, against prejudice. We have had to fight for basic human rights. You've rolled the dice for the first time in a game that our communities have been playing since before you were born.
We look forward, we look for a better world; we have survived worse than you, so take your best shot. Bring the heat and see what happens when millions of snowflakes melt, and the flood is unleashed upon you.
First and foremost those who have been minorities, been oppressed, been marginalised, and generally been vilified by society are not weak. They know how to fight because they do it every day. They have survived injustice and fought against it. They have long-established communities and they have widespread support not just from their own communities but from those who are allies to them.
Secondly, while most liberals vehemently oppose conflict, and war, and violence, you should not take that as an indication that they will not fight. People protest peacefully because they are strong in numbers and they know how dangerous that strength can become when the bridles are broken and their fury is unleashed - it leads to seminal moments such as the Arab Spring, it leads to revolutions.
There are those who have lived lives of privilege who think they are part of a revolution with their populist ideals. They are not. What they are doing is fighting in a war they are close to losing because for a long time they never realised the war was happening to begin with because they never took anyone or anything serious until they reached the moment when their privilege began to crumble. The racists and zealots, the xenophobes and the bigots, the basket of deplorables have realised their power is weak. They hold on to the fantasy that they can "return" us to a time that never really existed to begin with. They have visions of the past that do not represent reality at all. Revolutions take steps forward not back.
Thirdly, and finally, is the term snowflake. This was a word they used do debase us, to try and weaken us. Let me remind you of one simple fact. When a snowflake is exposed to heat it melts and becomes water, one of the most powerful substances on this planet. All life depends on it, our bodies are mostly composed of it, and when it comes together it is an unstoppable force. So I take that word, and I reject the negativity they try to attach to it, and I attach this message. We are snowflakes and in the heat we will melt into water and together we will become the flood and we will drowned you and your hatred. We have been fighting all our lives against inequality, against discrimination, against prejudice. We have had to fight for basic human rights. You've rolled the dice for the first time in a game that our communities have been playing since before you were born.
We look forward, we look for a better world; we have survived worse than you, so take your best shot. Bring the heat and see what happens when millions of snowflakes melt, and the flood is unleashed upon you.
The Plans Were On Display
At the end of November 2016 the UK government passed a law which has been nicknamed "The Snooper's Charter" - which should be s' but there we go - it grants over 50 agencies including the Police, Health Service, and Department for Work and Pensions, the right to access peoples' internet history without a warrant. There's a very interesting post here which you can read which details the list of agencies that can have access to your data.
There are two arguments people tend to give in response to this law in support of it, they are "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about" and "freedom must be sacrificed for security" - both of these arguments I take issue with. The former implies that it is acceptable to have every single part of your life recorded and accessed by the government. It also implies that the concept of intimacy does not exist, that all privacy is intended to conceal - if this were the case all clothing would be see-through, if there is no element to intimacy and the only reason it is needed is to shield you from the elements, not to conceal your body then you should have no issue wearing see-through clothes. If you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to worry about.
The second argument is also flawed, you could argue that if you were to build several mega-prisons around the country and put every single person in the entire country into them you would prevent all terrorist attacks, prevent most crimes, and create jobs for every inmate to carry out, assigning work to people rather than them looking for it. The problem with this extreme is that although it works to remove the impetus and the means of committing crimes for the vast majority of crimes - some would still persist as prisons aren't exactly holiday camps - this comes at the sacrifice of liberty. You would be punishing the majority of the population to prevent the minority from engaging in behaviours that the majority don't agree with.
When it comes to the Snooper's Charter the same principle applies. The view is taken that the sacrifice is necessary and that the vast majority of law-abiding citizens are an acceptable casualty to prevent a minority from engaging in those behaviours - although that is debatable as to whether surveillance actually prevents these behaviours but I digress.
There are of course ways around this, most notably the use of a VPN - Virtual Private Network - which for a fee you can access which allows you to browse the internet with privacy - provided the VPN is based outside the UK. To your ISP they see all traffic going back and forth between the VPN and nowhere else. If you don't want to pay for this service, you can also download Opera Developer right now, which includes a built in optional VPN - or you can wait until the feature is fully integrated into the main release and then use that instead.
There is an argument against these services, that they facilitate their misuse by providing an effective way to engage in misbehaviour. To those that use this defence I see that as hypocrisy. Yes a minority of people will misuse the service, I don't approve of that and neither do the majority that use them, it is regrettable, but it is tolerable for the exact same reason the government thinks it is tolerable to accept indiscriminate infringement of civil liberties, namely, if the government thinks it is acceptable to sacrifice the majority to pursue a minority, then it is perfectly acceptable to sacrifice a minority to protect the majority.
The bottom line here is if you did not want people to respond in this way, defending themselves, then you shouldn't attack them in the first place. If you are waging war on a small minority of terrorists in a country, you will only inflame that ideology by attacking the civilians too who have nothing to do with them. If civilians in Syria had the ability to stop missiles being fired and bombs dropped on their cities they would use that ability, even if it meant protecting those people that they do not want to protect, because those people have better defences than they do, and the only people getting hurt are the civilians.
With the Snooper's Charter the same is true. Far beyond VPNs there are other measures like Tor which can be used to further anonymise and protect the user. People who are engaging in widespread organised crime online have the technology to shield themselves from the powers of this bill and have been using it for a long time. This bill will not work to catch those people and that fact demonstrates the fundamental misunderstanding and lack of knowledge that ministers have that led us to this point. Make no mistake this bill gives the government no effective power or advantages to pursuing criminals, and gives the government the most power to infringe on civil liberties and encroach on your private life.
For example, the Department of Health could use the information to determine how long you spend online each day and make assumptions about your level of physical activity. Or perhaps the department for Work and Pensions could use the information to determine how many job sites people claiming benefits access per day/week and sanction claimants if they are not deemed to be "looking hard enough"; the Department for Communities in Northern Ireland can do the same. You could go so far as to say HM Revenue and Customs can use the information to build a profile of online activity and determine whether you are engaging in any activity that could be remunerated and use this information to identify any possible economic activity you have not declared to the tax office.
These would all be perfectly legal as a result of this bill, you can decide whether you think it will actually lead to it being used in this way, but understand the lack of safeguards and the fact they can do this without warrant means this is all possible. This bill was passed with deliberate ambiguity and lack of specific safeguards to allow it to be interpreted widely, and like the activity of GCHQ in recent years it will be something you will find very hard to prove.
People will look back on this law in decades to come and they will see that this was the foundation upon which widespread mass surveillance was granted legitimacy, and rather like the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the argument by the Government will simply be "The plans were on display and nobody objected"
There are two arguments people tend to give in response to this law in support of it, they are "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about" and "freedom must be sacrificed for security" - both of these arguments I take issue with. The former implies that it is acceptable to have every single part of your life recorded and accessed by the government. It also implies that the concept of intimacy does not exist, that all privacy is intended to conceal - if this were the case all clothing would be see-through, if there is no element to intimacy and the only reason it is needed is to shield you from the elements, not to conceal your body then you should have no issue wearing see-through clothes. If you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to worry about.
The second argument is also flawed, you could argue that if you were to build several mega-prisons around the country and put every single person in the entire country into them you would prevent all terrorist attacks, prevent most crimes, and create jobs for every inmate to carry out, assigning work to people rather than them looking for it. The problem with this extreme is that although it works to remove the impetus and the means of committing crimes for the vast majority of crimes - some would still persist as prisons aren't exactly holiday camps - this comes at the sacrifice of liberty. You would be punishing the majority of the population to prevent the minority from engaging in behaviours that the majority don't agree with.
When it comes to the Snooper's Charter the same principle applies. The view is taken that the sacrifice is necessary and that the vast majority of law-abiding citizens are an acceptable casualty to prevent a minority from engaging in those behaviours - although that is debatable as to whether surveillance actually prevents these behaviours but I digress.
There are of course ways around this, most notably the use of a VPN - Virtual Private Network - which for a fee you can access which allows you to browse the internet with privacy - provided the VPN is based outside the UK. To your ISP they see all traffic going back and forth between the VPN and nowhere else. If you don't want to pay for this service, you can also download Opera Developer right now, which includes a built in optional VPN - or you can wait until the feature is fully integrated into the main release and then use that instead.
There is an argument against these services, that they facilitate their misuse by providing an effective way to engage in misbehaviour. To those that use this defence I see that as hypocrisy. Yes a minority of people will misuse the service, I don't approve of that and neither do the majority that use them, it is regrettable, but it is tolerable for the exact same reason the government thinks it is tolerable to accept indiscriminate infringement of civil liberties, namely, if the government thinks it is acceptable to sacrifice the majority to pursue a minority, then it is perfectly acceptable to sacrifice a minority to protect the majority.
The bottom line here is if you did not want people to respond in this way, defending themselves, then you shouldn't attack them in the first place. If you are waging war on a small minority of terrorists in a country, you will only inflame that ideology by attacking the civilians too who have nothing to do with them. If civilians in Syria had the ability to stop missiles being fired and bombs dropped on their cities they would use that ability, even if it meant protecting those people that they do not want to protect, because those people have better defences than they do, and the only people getting hurt are the civilians.
With the Snooper's Charter the same is true. Far beyond VPNs there are other measures like Tor which can be used to further anonymise and protect the user. People who are engaging in widespread organised crime online have the technology to shield themselves from the powers of this bill and have been using it for a long time. This bill will not work to catch those people and that fact demonstrates the fundamental misunderstanding and lack of knowledge that ministers have that led us to this point. Make no mistake this bill gives the government no effective power or advantages to pursuing criminals, and gives the government the most power to infringe on civil liberties and encroach on your private life.
For example, the Department of Health could use the information to determine how long you spend online each day and make assumptions about your level of physical activity. Or perhaps the department for Work and Pensions could use the information to determine how many job sites people claiming benefits access per day/week and sanction claimants if they are not deemed to be "looking hard enough"; the Department for Communities in Northern Ireland can do the same. You could go so far as to say HM Revenue and Customs can use the information to build a profile of online activity and determine whether you are engaging in any activity that could be remunerated and use this information to identify any possible economic activity you have not declared to the tax office.
These would all be perfectly legal as a result of this bill, you can decide whether you think it will actually lead to it being used in this way, but understand the lack of safeguards and the fact they can do this without warrant means this is all possible. This bill was passed with deliberate ambiguity and lack of specific safeguards to allow it to be interpreted widely, and like the activity of GCHQ in recent years it will be something you will find very hard to prove.
People will look back on this law in decades to come and they will see that this was the foundation upon which widespread mass surveillance was granted legitimacy, and rather like the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the argument by the Government will simply be "The plans were on display and nobody objected"
The YouTube Rant
Forewarning: This post is long, and it's mostly a rant about YouTube.
When you think of a video website the first one you'd think of is usually YouTube, unless you have a more specific interest which you know is better catered to by a third party site. YouTube started out as a site that had community in mind, much like many other sites that incorporated social elements. As with Facebook however, I think ultimately the growth of the site as a whole has had a negative effect on the ability to build communities, because they, by definition tend to be self contained or clearly defined, whereas, YouTube and other websites like it have been steadily moving ever closer to being generic.
A number of people on YouTube have made very successful careers which they built up through the site, but those people are few in number compared to the site's user base. While I have spoken in the past about the 90-9-1 rule in relation to online communities, that doesn't even apply here because the number of people who have been successful through YouTube is a lot less than 1% of the user-base.
Looking at the Top 100 YouTube channels by subscriber count if we look at these 100 channels and strip out the VEVO channels, record companies, TV shows, and Special channels that aggregate content via tags, then we are left with 37 channels that have more than 10 million subscribers.
YouTube doesn't say specifically how many users it has but it says it has over one billion so if we use 1bn as the marker, these 37 channels that have over 10 million subscribers represent 0.0000037% of the site's users. If they have 10 million subscribers, those 10 million subscribers represent 1% of the site's user-base.
When it comes to those 37 channels, there are a number which have stagnated in terms of growth. I encourage you to explore SocialBlade, their statistics are extensive and provide fascinating insights into some of these channels. There are a handful of channels in those 37 which are continuing to grow, one or two at a rate of more or less 1 million new subscribers per year. While all of this sounds promising, you have to remember they are not paid based on subscriber count, they are paid based on a number of factors including view counts, and advertising impressions. The best method of estimation is to equate approximately 1,000 views as $1 earned. This used to be $2 but Google decided to slash the CPM rate offered to YouTube partners.
Bearing this in mind you can pick your favourite YouTube channel, they don't have to be in that list, and go to their channel and view their uploaded videos page. Scroll through and look at their recent uploads versus past uploads. There are a number of channels which have been steadily declining in terms of their income. There's one person in particular who inspired this post for me who shall remain nameless for legal reasons. Looking at their YouTube channel however, their videos prior to 2016 made approximately 5 million to 10 million views on average - this amounted to $10,000 to $20,000 per video at the old rate, and $5,000 to $10,000 per video at the new rate. They were uploading 120 videos per year approximately. At the time, they made approximately $1.8m per year.
Over the course of 2016 those figures declined steadily. In the last six months of 2016 they have only had 3 videos break 1 million views, and 11 break 500k views at time of writing. They have been uploading 1 video a week so around 52 by year end, with all but 3 breaking 1 million views, and 11 breaking 500k, being generous and rounding up to 500k and 1 million, they have made at most, and rounding the whole figure up to one significant figure, they have made approximately $50,000 for the year - that represents approximately 3% of their previous income. That's an incredibly steep fall in income.
You might be thinking their career is over. You'd be wrong. This particular person is like many of those who reached this level of success on YouTube - they hedged their bets. Not relying solely on their YouTube revenue they created a wide variety of alternative income streams. They followed the trends of many big name YouTube stars who released books, and merchandise that they made money from and will continue to make money from. They lined up other engagements outside YouTube and created sustainable income streams that continue unabated by the decline in YouTube revenue. As a result it has become apparent from their YouTube channel that most if not all of their videos now exist to maintain a presence on the site, not as an effort to actually use the site.
So the question is, which came first, was it the decline in views and subsequently the fall in income, or was it the lack of motivation? That's very hard to determine due to the fact that most youtube videos have view counts that rise over time, even when no longer relevant or recent, view counts still tend to rise precipitously as they become subject to their own popularity due to the way youtube related videos and suggestion algorithms work.
What I find interesting is that beyond the "top" channel, subscriber growth doesn't move quickly for the vast majority of YouTube channels. So the question is whether more channels can actually achieve this over time or whether the "big name" youtube channels will one by one succumb to the same motivational decline and stagnate putting an end to growth.
This is the point where we must leave the realm of websites and the internet and take a step into wall street and the realm of financial markets. As you look around there are a few terms you should learn before you continue. Predicted earnings is the expected earnings a company will make going forward. Share price is the current selling price for shares in that company, this rises and falls in reaction to the perceived value of a company. A boom or bull market is a market where things are going well, and it is advisable to buy shares, and a bust or a bear market is a market where it is advisable to sell off your shares, either because of perceived volatility, increased risk, or a fall in predicted earnings, among other things.
YouTube, and other companies like it are companies that exist within these markets. We tend to forget this because we preoccupy ourselves with their products rather than the company behind the products. YouTube is owned by Google, which is part of Alphabet Inc. It has income and expenditure, money that comes in and goes out. For the company to be profitable it needs to be sustainable, income must rise to compensate for any increase in expenditure.
Most businesses that trade on the stock market must contend with market cycles. These are cycles of boom and bust which represent periods of growth and decline respectively. YouTube and many other websites have been growing but they are reaching a limit to that growth. YouTube like Facebook is a member of the billion+ users club, which is still quite rare for websites to achieve. The problem with having such high user counts is that you reach a saturation point, where you can't reasonably expect to grow anymore than you have. In the case of Facebook they are quite literally running out of people, they have invested in technologies to try and widen internet access in developing countries, this is all in the name of growth, this is not out of any genuine concern for the humanitarian cause.
As far as YouTube is concerned, there is no shortage of people trying to make it big on the site, but there are many barriers to them succeeding. The main one that I can see, and the reason for this post to begin with, is the fact that the community element of the site was systematically broken down and removed over time. In the name of reaching a generic interface and trying to increase the exposure of users to new content, YouTube broke the main driver of content consumption. Increasing content consumption by increasing exposure of users to new content outside of their community when their interest should have been left to the content creators who have a better understanding of compatibility. In the pursuit of trying to pop the bubbles of community that viewers were often trapped in, YouTube instead built walls that prevented users from building communities. The handful of channels that are growing rapidly from the top 100 I mentioned above all share something in common. They have communities centred around them. The creators themselves engage with their viewers in many ways and they have demonstrated in practice how the site should actually work.
The walls that need to be tore down and replaced are those built by the revisions made to the comment system, the forced integration of Google+ was one of the most idiotic decisions Google ever made which poisoned the site for many. YouTube needs to move away from generic approaches and move back to encouraging interaction between the creators and their viewers, not the site as a whole. YouTube needs to stop creating barriers to consuming the content the viewers actually visit the site to consume. The notification system for subscriptions needs to be revised as many viewers don't even receive notifications of uploaded videos. Above all else YouTube needs to stop presenting content from random unrelated channels that don't belong to the communities people are part of just because titles match, or videos happen to share a common tag.
When you think of a video website the first one you'd think of is usually YouTube, unless you have a more specific interest which you know is better catered to by a third party site. YouTube started out as a site that had community in mind, much like many other sites that incorporated social elements. As with Facebook however, I think ultimately the growth of the site as a whole has had a negative effect on the ability to build communities, because they, by definition tend to be self contained or clearly defined, whereas, YouTube and other websites like it have been steadily moving ever closer to being generic.
A number of people on YouTube have made very successful careers which they built up through the site, but those people are few in number compared to the site's user base. While I have spoken in the past about the 90-9-1 rule in relation to online communities, that doesn't even apply here because the number of people who have been successful through YouTube is a lot less than 1% of the user-base.
Looking at the Top 100 YouTube channels by subscriber count if we look at these 100 channels and strip out the VEVO channels, record companies, TV shows, and Special channels that aggregate content via tags, then we are left with 37 channels that have more than 10 million subscribers.
YouTube doesn't say specifically how many users it has but it says it has over one billion so if we use 1bn as the marker, these 37 channels that have over 10 million subscribers represent 0.0000037% of the site's users. If they have 10 million subscribers, those 10 million subscribers represent 1% of the site's user-base.
When it comes to those 37 channels, there are a number which have stagnated in terms of growth. I encourage you to explore SocialBlade, their statistics are extensive and provide fascinating insights into some of these channels. There are a handful of channels in those 37 which are continuing to grow, one or two at a rate of more or less 1 million new subscribers per year. While all of this sounds promising, you have to remember they are not paid based on subscriber count, they are paid based on a number of factors including view counts, and advertising impressions. The best method of estimation is to equate approximately 1,000 views as $1 earned. This used to be $2 but Google decided to slash the CPM rate offered to YouTube partners.
Bearing this in mind you can pick your favourite YouTube channel, they don't have to be in that list, and go to their channel and view their uploaded videos page. Scroll through and look at their recent uploads versus past uploads. There are a number of channels which have been steadily declining in terms of their income. There's one person in particular who inspired this post for me who shall remain nameless for legal reasons. Looking at their YouTube channel however, their videos prior to 2016 made approximately 5 million to 10 million views on average - this amounted to $10,000 to $20,000 per video at the old rate, and $5,000 to $10,000 per video at the new rate. They were uploading 120 videos per year approximately. At the time, they made approximately $1.8m per year.
Over the course of 2016 those figures declined steadily. In the last six months of 2016 they have only had 3 videos break 1 million views, and 11 break 500k views at time of writing. They have been uploading 1 video a week so around 52 by year end, with all but 3 breaking 1 million views, and 11 breaking 500k, being generous and rounding up to 500k and 1 million, they have made at most, and rounding the whole figure up to one significant figure, they have made approximately $50,000 for the year - that represents approximately 3% of their previous income. That's an incredibly steep fall in income.
You might be thinking their career is over. You'd be wrong. This particular person is like many of those who reached this level of success on YouTube - they hedged their bets. Not relying solely on their YouTube revenue they created a wide variety of alternative income streams. They followed the trends of many big name YouTube stars who released books, and merchandise that they made money from and will continue to make money from. They lined up other engagements outside YouTube and created sustainable income streams that continue unabated by the decline in YouTube revenue. As a result it has become apparent from their YouTube channel that most if not all of their videos now exist to maintain a presence on the site, not as an effort to actually use the site.
So the question is, which came first, was it the decline in views and subsequently the fall in income, or was it the lack of motivation? That's very hard to determine due to the fact that most youtube videos have view counts that rise over time, even when no longer relevant or recent, view counts still tend to rise precipitously as they become subject to their own popularity due to the way youtube related videos and suggestion algorithms work.
What I find interesting is that beyond the "top" channel, subscriber growth doesn't move quickly for the vast majority of YouTube channels. So the question is whether more channels can actually achieve this over time or whether the "big name" youtube channels will one by one succumb to the same motivational decline and stagnate putting an end to growth.
This is the point where we must leave the realm of websites and the internet and take a step into wall street and the realm of financial markets. As you look around there are a few terms you should learn before you continue. Predicted earnings is the expected earnings a company will make going forward. Share price is the current selling price for shares in that company, this rises and falls in reaction to the perceived value of a company. A boom or bull market is a market where things are going well, and it is advisable to buy shares, and a bust or a bear market is a market where it is advisable to sell off your shares, either because of perceived volatility, increased risk, or a fall in predicted earnings, among other things.
YouTube, and other companies like it are companies that exist within these markets. We tend to forget this because we preoccupy ourselves with their products rather than the company behind the products. YouTube is owned by Google, which is part of Alphabet Inc. It has income and expenditure, money that comes in and goes out. For the company to be profitable it needs to be sustainable, income must rise to compensate for any increase in expenditure.
Most businesses that trade on the stock market must contend with market cycles. These are cycles of boom and bust which represent periods of growth and decline respectively. YouTube and many other websites have been growing but they are reaching a limit to that growth. YouTube like Facebook is a member of the billion+ users club, which is still quite rare for websites to achieve. The problem with having such high user counts is that you reach a saturation point, where you can't reasonably expect to grow anymore than you have. In the case of Facebook they are quite literally running out of people, they have invested in technologies to try and widen internet access in developing countries, this is all in the name of growth, this is not out of any genuine concern for the humanitarian cause.
As far as YouTube is concerned, there is no shortage of people trying to make it big on the site, but there are many barriers to them succeeding. The main one that I can see, and the reason for this post to begin with, is the fact that the community element of the site was systematically broken down and removed over time. In the name of reaching a generic interface and trying to increase the exposure of users to new content, YouTube broke the main driver of content consumption. Increasing content consumption by increasing exposure of users to new content outside of their community when their interest should have been left to the content creators who have a better understanding of compatibility. In the pursuit of trying to pop the bubbles of community that viewers were often trapped in, YouTube instead built walls that prevented users from building communities. The handful of channels that are growing rapidly from the top 100 I mentioned above all share something in common. They have communities centred around them. The creators themselves engage with their viewers in many ways and they have demonstrated in practice how the site should actually work.
The walls that need to be tore down and replaced are those built by the revisions made to the comment system, the forced integration of Google+ was one of the most idiotic decisions Google ever made which poisoned the site for many. YouTube needs to move away from generic approaches and move back to encouraging interaction between the creators and their viewers, not the site as a whole. YouTube needs to stop creating barriers to consuming the content the viewers actually visit the site to consume. The notification system for subscriptions needs to be revised as many viewers don't even receive notifications of uploaded videos. Above all else YouTube needs to stop presenting content from random unrelated channels that don't belong to the communities people are part of just because titles match, or videos happen to share a common tag.
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