Technology posts

If I were king of the world I would ban this practice.

This is from my gmail account. If I'm going through mail and deleting as I go, with the cursor over the trash-can icon, it looks like this:

Click, delete.

But if the next one in line is a sponsored ad, it's a different setup. The trash can suddenly moves to the side. And in its place?

Learn more. Meaning if you're just clicking and deleting, as I do, when you get to the ad and click again, it won't delete the email; it'll take you to the ad's website. And Google will get money for the clickthrough.

I wonder how much money Google gets for these clickthroughs? Probably not insignificant.

Here's my question: Do businesses know about this? That they're paying for inadvertent clickthroughs? Feels like a class action waiting to happen. So much of the modern tech world feels like a class action waiting to happen.

Someone must have traduced erikl1963 because without having done anything wrong he found his Instagram account permanently suspended one fine morning. 

Well, apparently I did do something wrong. My account, or activity on it, wasn’t following Meta’s “Community Standards on account integrity.” I know. Meta has Community Standards? That are important enough to use the title case? But there it is, in the email, with a link to a page that explains nothing. 

There’s also a “Review details” button that leads to a webpage:

How we made this decision
Our technology found your account, or activity on it, doesn’t follow our rules. As a result, our technology took action.

Our technology found out so our technology took action? Yeah, we’re doomed.

But like Josef K., I was allowed to appeal my case—whatever it was. First, I was asked for my email address so a confirmation code could be sent. So a robot could determine I wasn’t a robot, as John Mulaney succinctly put it six years ago.

Then it asked for my phone number. At this point I triple-checked the email addresses and URLs to make sure everyone was who they said they were. At this point, too, I began to wonder if the whole thing wasn’t a scam, by Instagram, to get me to give up my phone number. Or had I already given it up? I didn’t remember.

I’ve only been on Instagram since Sept. 1, 2023. I left Facebook in 2019 because Meta is awful, and I left Twitter in 2022 because Elon Musk is awfuller. I experimented with other social media sites, hating myself all the while—that I actually have this need now, this daily need, to engage without engaging, to see what’s going down, kinda, to drink the salt water because I’m so, so thirsty, and these other sites, sadly, pathetically, didn’t help much with that thirst, not even in the awful salt-watery way that Twitter or Facebook had, which is why, eventually, I re-upped with Zuckerberg, opening an account on Instagram, tail tucked between my legs.

I wasn’t a fan. I’m a word guy, it’s a picture site. It’s worse than a picture site, it’s a video site. It’s worse than that as we all know and for all the reasons we know. But once in a while someone I like posts a picture I like.

I tried to do the same. It was on Instagram that I posted photos of my older brother Chris and I at Mount Rainier when he came to visit me in Seattle in Oct. 2023. And it was on Instagram that I posted childhood photos of Chris and I with a link to his obituary after he was murdered in a random attack at a busstop in Edina, Minn. on November 22, 2023. And it was on Instagram that I posted various photos of my 16-year-old cat Jellybean in the hallway of our condo. And it was on Instagram that I posted a link to Jellybean’s obituary when we had to put her to sleep—kill her—in December 2023 after she continued to suffer following a cancer diagnosis. And it was on Instagram that I posted photos of our new kitten, Clem, short for Clemente, in Feb. 2024. And it was on Instagram that I posted a link to Clem’s obituary after 11 days of dysentery and four vet visits with 4-6 different vets, none of whom realized the scope of his problem, the last of whom couldn’t stabilize him at 5:00 on a Saturday morning. 

Yeah, it hasn’t been a good year. Oh, and the notice of my permanent suspension on Instagram came one year after my brother’s murder. To the day. Nice touch, Meta. 

Anyway, I entered my mobile number so its technology could send me a confirmation code to prove my identity to its technology one more time. Nothing happened. Instead, beneath the fill-in box, there appeared a little red message:

Code not sent: Try again later or use a different mobile number. 

Somewhere, Kafka smiles.

If I ever find out what I did to warrant permanent suspension from a social media platform I don’t like, I’ll let you know. But at this point, it feels like a gift.

**

UPDATE: Same day, evening, the “Code not sent” glitch—if it was a glitch—was fixed, Instagram sent me a code to verify my account, I did, and for one brief shining moment it let me know I was appealing its decision. And then this, literally a second later. 

As I suspected, it just wanted the phone number. “Sometimes we need to take precautions to ensure that everyone's data on Instagram is safe and usable and sellable by Instagram.” 

Jackie Chan: Who is he? What is he known for? 

This one is a little tougher than some of the other IMDb SNAFUs. In the States, Jackie broke with “Rumble in the Bronx,” so we missed out on his long rise from obscurity (small role in “Enter the Dragon”) to kung fu western stardom (“Snake in the Eagle's Shadow,” “Drunken Master,” “Young Master”) to early 20th century fare (“Project A”) to modern stuff (“Police Story”). In Asia, he kept breaking bigger and bigger. I wonder what this looks like on Asian IMDb? Can you see that? Can I see that? 

Anyway, this is the U.S. version. 

Wrong. 

“Police Story,” yes. I'll even give you “Rush Hour” for the American crowd. But “Who Am I?” WTF? Who are you, IMDb? I'll tell you who you are. You're a bunch of fucking morons.

Sigh.

Look, I like all these movies. I've seen all these movies. (Wait, not “Lust, Caution.”) He was one of my indie guys in the 1990s. I loved “Wedding Banquet” and “Eat Drink Man Woman” even more, and I loved his Hollywood stuff, “Sense and Sensibility” and “Ice Storm.” And then he broke big with “Crouching Tiger.” But Ang Lee became the first non-white dude to win a directing Oscar, and he did it for a movie that was a cultural phenomenon, and it was called “Brokeback Mountain,” and somehow, via IMDb's algorithms, which supposedly gives weight to things like Oscars, it doesn't make the cut. 

I swear, they're gaslighting the culture.

Back in the day I had a huge crush on Mia Sara, as did most of my generation, and mostly for playing Sloane in “Ferris Bueller's Day Off.” But IMDb isn't having that shit. 

Maybe I'm wrong? Maybe there's this huge “Timecop” fanbase out there. And when Sara dies, The New York Times, or its equivalent, will let us know, “Mia Sara, 'Timecop' actress ...” etc. etc.

But I'm not wrong.

Can IMDb do anything right anymore? In the early days, without Amazon's money, somehow they made it work, but now, with tons of dough, and (I imagine) layers upon layers of Amazonian management, it's just one pratfall after another. There's obviously the algorithm from hell. That's a daily occurence. And then there's stuff like this. 

What is it? That's the bottom portion of Clint Eastwood's acting credits on IMDb, in the usual reverse chronological order. So it's his first acting credits—that early Universal Studios crap he had to do. You know: the sequel to “Creature from the Black Lagoon,” “Tarantula,” “Kelly's Heroes”...

Wait, what? “Kelly's Heroes”? From 1970? As his screen debut? You don't even need to know movies to know that's wrong. You just need to know how to count. I guess IMDb doesn't know how to count.

I tried to alert IMDb to this glitch two weeks ago but nothing's changed.

UPDATE, APRIL 29: Hey, this is fixed!! I'm proud of ya, IMDb. One down, 10,327 to go. 

Who exactly is running IMDb into the ground? This was a photo on Cord Jefferson's page:

Jefferson is the writer-director of “American Fiction,” starring Jeffrey Wright, and for the past 10 years he's worked on “The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore” (196 episodes), “Master of None” (10 episodes), and “The Good Place” (25 episodes). All good shows. He also wrote and was executive story editor on “Watchmen,” the great 2019 ur-superhero HBO series that introduced the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre to most Americans. The photo is him accepting a WGA or two for that work.

And what does IMDb credit him for? The shitty 2009 “Watchmen” that Zack Snyder adapted.

I've seen a lot of these types of mistakes recently: wrong title, wrong link. It's like IMDb has shunted half its shit off to AI, and AI doesn't know between “Watchmen” (2009) and "Watchmen (2019). It's just ... try a little, IMDb. You still have a good thing going. Try a little. Before we all find a hell of a good universe next door.

A humblebrag is when you seem to be going “Aw, shucks” and you're not. You're stroking your ego. You're beating your chest.

Do we have a 21st century term for what the following does? It was part of a message I received the other day from LinkedIn:

While they're pushing or promoting their product (the app), they're also dissing their product (the website). Is there a term for that yet? And if not, what would you call it? Promodiss? And is there a pre-Internet precedent? It would have to be a product that has multiple ways of consuming or experiencing it, and that's not most products. Hostess couldn't say TWINKIES ARE BETTER IN THE MOUTH! 

I'm also getting a slight scolding vibe here. LinkedIn is basically telling me “You're doing it wrong. Do it this way. The way we want you to.” Creepy.

Here's the Business Insider headline: 

The banks which loaned Elon Musk money to help buy Twitter expect to lose $2 billion on the debt, report says

Key stats:

• Downloads of the app (once Twitter, now X) fell by almost 30% in just three months
• A marketing firm says only two of the world's biggest advertisers advertised on Twitter/X last month
• Fidelity has marked Twitter's valuation down by 2/3

A key graf:

Bankers close to the deal told The Journal that X could be given a junk-bond rating, meaning it is at risk of defaulting on the loans, due to both Musk's controversial management style and a waning ad market.

My farewell post, nearly a year ago:

I've said it before: If you had told me to destroy Twitter without anyone knowing I was destroying Twitter, I wouldn't have been able to come up with half the stuff Musk has done in supposed service to the company. So I guess, in a way, he is a genius.

This is HBO Max, so Warner Bros./Discovery:

They've since changed that heading to read “A Scary Good Time,” because saying “Embrace the Fear' about one of the best comedies of the 1970s makes you look a little stupid. At least they were only stupid for a few weeks. 

Speaking of: This is Google, after a search on ”Bart Starr."

Coach? Starr was a quarterback for 16 years, a coach for eight. As QB, he led the Packers to three NFL championships and the first two Super Bowl titles, won an MVP (1966), and was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio in 1977. He became legendary. During his years as a coach, the Packers appeared in the postseason once, losing in the second round to the Dallas Cowboys in the expanded 1982 playoffs. He was a little less than legendary.

It's still there, that designation. Google IDs him as a coach. Because Google. Because the whole damn thing is getting worse. 

Embrace the fear.

For a few years during the 1960s, Marvel Comics produced a humor magazine called NOT BRAND ECHH, a title playing off of commercials of the time that pitted a named product (Pepsi-Cola, say) vs. an unnamed product labeled “Brand X.” That was the brand you never wanted: Brand X.

I thought of it again when hearing about Elon's latest supergenius move: rebranding Twitter as X. Apparently that happened on Sunday.

Per the NY Times:

Inside Twitter's headquarters in San Francisco on Monday, X logos were projected in the cafeteria, while conference rooms were renamed to words with X in them, including “eXposure,” “eXult” and “s3Xy,” according to photos seen by The New York Times. Workers also began removing bird-related paraphernalia, such as a giant blue logo in the cafeteria. Outside the building, workers took off the first six letters of Twitter's name before the San Francisco Police Department stopped them for performing “unauthorized work,” according to an alert sent by the department.

Supposedly this is a first step in making Twitter an everything company like China's WeChat, but it's a stupid, clumsy first step—more of a pratfall, really.

“It's natural to wonder why the world's richest man would spend his time dismantling one of the world's most recognizable social-media brands in favor of an inscrutable super app nobody asked for,” The Atlantic's Charlie Warzel writes midway through his article, “Why Elon Killed the Bird.” Jeff Tiedrich has less patience in his post, “Never Fuck With Your Brand,” writing, “Elon hasn't just fucked with his brand, he's poured gasoline all over his brand and set it the fuck on fire. He's replaced one of the world's most iconic logos with a generic letter of the alphabet—one that thousands of business already use.”

What's a tweet now? An X? Or ex? Or echh?

To coin a phrase: Who says a social media platform has to be good?

I think I got pulled in to the IMDb slideshow because I didn't recognize the actors and thought, “Well, if this is 'Before They Were Famous,' maybe this will help me figure out who among the kids is famous.” Win win.

Sashe Calle, for example. Here she is on the afternoon soap “The Young and the Restless” before she was famous. So why is she famous now? Ah, she's the new Supergirl in the new “The Flash” movie nobody went to see. Got it. And here's Anson Mount wearing flannel on some 1995 TV somethingorother. And now he's ...? Oh right, he's the new square-jawed Capt. Pike on the new “Star Trek.” Or the new old “Star Trek.”

And then I got to the one on Kevin Costner.

Before he was famous.

Kevin Costner.

In “Dances With Wolves.”

By that point, he'd only starred in “No Way Out,” “The Untouchables” (the fourth-biggest box-office hit of 1987) “Bull Durham” (15th of 1988) and “Field of Dreams” (14th of 1989). I subscribe to newspapers.com, which digitizes and makes searchable hundreds of newspapers from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries; and in 1989, among the newspapers this website has contracts with, there were 40,113 references to Kevin Costner. 

Before he was famous. 

Could IMDb get it more wrong? Could IMDb continue to get it more wrong in all of the ways they do? It's like they're gaslighting our cultural history. Costner became more famous after this, sure, and “Dances With Wolves” helped. And so did “The Bodyguard” and Whitney Houston and “I Will Always Love You,” and all that. In 1991, per newspapers.com, he's referenced 80,301 times. So that's twice as famous. He became twice as famous as he was before. But before, he was just one of the most famous actors in Hollywood.

Put another way: It's not like anyone went to “Dances With Wolves” in 1990 and said, “So who's this starring again?” We knew.

IMDb, if you can get a deleted-scene screengrab of him as Alex in “The Big Chill,” yes, that's him before he was famous. You might want to try that.

This is increasingly the thing. Corporations are constantly asking you how they're doing but they don't really want to know. It's just data. It's a number, not an explanation. And there's no out. There's just now or later but no never. How are we doing? How are you doing? You were doing OK until you kept asking me how you were doing.

We made a mistake not regulating these assholes.

The other day I noticed that Amazon.com fixed one of the many glitches on its site: the 1925 Richard Barthelmess movie “Shore Leave” was now listed as 1925 rather than 1969. Good for it! Someone somewhere was actually paying attention. Or maybe it was an AI fix? I'll take it either way. It made me wonder how they were doing with all the other glitches I've flagged recently.

Turns out, meh:

• Amazon-owned IMDb says you can watch the 1931 George Arliss movie “The Millionaire” on Amazon Prime ... but the link still leads to the 2012 Russian film “The Millionaire.” (First flagged: May 2020)
• Amazon-owned IMDb says you can watch the 1925 Lon Chaney movie “The Monster” on Amazon Prime ... but the link still leads to the 1975 Joan Collins horror flick “The Monster” (First flagged: February 2021)
• Hey, another fix! The 1933 Edward G. Robinson comedy “The Little Giant” no longer says it co-stars Ewan McGregor (born 1971). Wait ... No, sorry. They just no longer list actors and directors on the first page. You have to go into the “Details” section, where, again, the movie stars Edward G. Robinson, Mary Astor, and ... yes, Ewan McGregor (born 1971). Plus in the “Related” section, offering up other films to stream from the principles, they include Astor, supporting players Helen Vinson and Russell Hopton, director Roy Del Ruth, but bupkis on Robinson. (First flagged: August 2021)

I guess one small step for Amazon was just one small step for Amazon.

For years Twitter had a blue checkmark system to verify “name” accounts. Basically it was Twitter telling us that this famous person—Barack Obama, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Meryl Streep—is who they say they are. It's not some parody account or scammer. They're verified. That's why they have a blue checkmark next to their name. 

When Elon Musk took over Twitter, he decided this vertification system smacked of elitism rather than common sense and announced that he was charging for the service. His original offer of $20 per month was lowered (during a hilarious real-time Twitter exchange with Stephen King) to $8 a month, but here's the thing: Anybody could buy it. Anybody could be verified. Anybody. Elon's Twitter did zero due diligence on the accounts, just took the money and ran. The checkmark verified nothing. That wasn't the reason I left Twitter but it was happening around the time I left Twitter.

Today, at work, I got the message below from Twitter about our work account.

You've turned off two-factor authentication for [account]
This means you'll no longer have this added protection when you log in to Twitter. Your account will be more vulnerable to compromise. You can turn on two-factor authentication any time in the Account > Security section of your Twitter settings.

I forwarded the message to our social media liasion, who informed me that it relates to the blue checkmark. Now, if you don't pay for the checkmark, you lose this extra layer of security that Twitter's own team put in place (pre-Elon) to protect us all from hackers.

What an absolute shithead this guy is. What a turd. First, he makes the verification system useless while simultaneously charging for it. Then, when not enough people jump, he says if you don't pay for my now-useless verification system we'll make your account “more vulnerable to compromise.” It's penny-ante extortion is what it is. The dude is just begging to be regulated. I hope it happens soon. I hope it leads more people to jump—off the platform. Permanently.

For what it's worth, you can find me on these platforms:

• Mastodon
• Spoutible

I'm a little bored with both, to be honest, since not enough people I know are on them. It feels like I arrived too early to a party and I'm just standing there with a drink wondering what the fuck. But at least I don't have to deal with the whims of that little turd anymore.