đ Gatekeepers
đ Gatekeepers
Crypto crash (lmao) | Details on the upcoming Digital Services Act | I hope El Salvador are okay
Hello â this week has been rated by me as good! Finally đ. There has been a huge crypto crash. I was almost tempted to rate this week as terrific for the first time ever but then I remembered that there are people out there other than the unapologetically rich who have lost their money this week.
The crypto community has managed to recreate the 2008 financial crash within their own little bubble â well done them!
Iâm also going to chat about the upcoming Digital Services Act, because thatâs actually important and based in the real world
Not funny: El Salvador use Bitcoin as legal tender â whatâs going to happen to them?
đ” đŹÂ đ« âCryptoassetsâ
Right so... around three months ago, the Super Bowl was completely over flowing with crypto ads. Now, we are in the hugest crypto crash ever, and I literally cannot stop smiling.
Iâm not going to explain the ins and outs of what happened in the last few days. I suggest you read this for details. Basically, there is a âstablecoinâ called Terra ($UST) which is meant to be pegged to the dollar. That means that 1 Terra should always equal $1. Unfortunately all this so called âpeggingâ (đ) hasnât worked at all. At the time of writing (Thursday) 1 Terra is worth 5 cents. Itâs basically like this Rick and Morty episode:
⥠Shocking: The person who prints Terra for a living is now desperately asking the community not to lose hope. The collapse of Terra has also caused the downward spiral of other coins â almost as if itâs all built on a house of cards. Personally I like to live in a reality where houses are made of BRICK, a dollar is simply worth a DOLLAR, and itâs not built around a âcommunityâ, but rather you use it to BUY GOODS AND SERVICES. (Or even better: a reality where we donât use money and we are just okay with that).
Iâm struggling to understand why more people didnât see this coming. Oh yes thatâs right, they were all blinded by greed. Some were of course sold false hope, and a lot of the chat on Twitter is around how this crash has caused people to lose their life savings.
Correction: they lost their savings the moment they pumped it all into crypto. Crazes are followed by crashes. Itâs as simple as that.
What we shouldnât do is laugh to those who were lied to; the majority of people who buy into crypto are told it will make them rich, but really they exist solely to generate wealth for the few at the top. But now, even the few at the top are struggling â we should be laughing at them. Here are all the ways you can laugh at people online, in case you forgot:
But please, do not laugh at El Salvador
Unfortunately, the president of El Salvador is a willing pawn in the relentless crypto hype train. He loves crypto, and the crypto community love him â and he made Bitcoin legal tender just last year.
President Bukele bought $25m of Bitcoin at that time, and now itâs worth half that. Citizens of El Salvador have had no say or control over this huge decision. Some people donât even have internet connections, let alone bank accounts, so Iâm not sure what problem Bitcoin was really going to solve here. This is a country that was already deep in debt, and now itâs even deeper. So whatâs Bukele gonna do about it?
đźÂ The Digital Services Act is getting finalised woahhhh letâs talk about it
The thing about the Digital Services Act is that my main reactions so far have been something like: âoh wow, great idea! For... ten years agoâ. But, you know, if law-making didnât move at an utterly glacial speed, Iâd probably have nothing to write about in this newsletter.
What I will say is that during my tenure of obsessively reading about technology and how itâs being regulated, there is probably nothing quite as comprehensive as this piece of legislation right now. Well done, Europe. Itâs times like this that Iâm glad we in the UK decided to stay in the EU đ.
đ Okay enough BANTS. Iâll be focussing on these points today, which I yanked directly from this giant page:
The whole âletâs be more transparent with algorithmsâ thing
The new granular controls theyâre going to give users, including âmaking it as easy to opt out as it is to opt inâ.
They want to force big platforms to share data with researchers and law enforcement â if you are a seasoned Horrific/Terrific reader, you probably already know my opinion on this.
đ¶âđ«ïžÂ On making recommendation algorithms more transparent: the act says that both legislators and end users should be provided with more insight into how these algorithms work so that they can know exactly how theyâre being oppressed/misled/turned into a product. Of course, people like Internet Trump (Elon Musk) love this kind of thing. In fact, it feels like nearly everyone in all directions seem to think itâs a good idea to just show everyone how these algorithms work. Well itâs not. Reasons:
As I discussed in a previous episode of Horrific/Terrific, allowing individuals to scrutinise the inner-workings of a newsfeed algorithm has huge potential to make the internet even worse for everyone.
Think about it: if you knew exactly how a recommendation algorithm worked, and you were trying to get the word out about something that you think is important, would you not use that knowledge to your advantage? (i.e.: create heaps and heaps of spam).
đ
đŒ On making it easier to opt-out, and controls over targeted ads: Yes, yes fine... giving people the choice to receive ads which are not based on profiling is great. But hereâs another idea: quit it with all the online ads in general. Haha Iâm kidding â that would be too hard not benefit capitalism. Anyway, these opt-out rules would only apply to âgatekeepersâ, which is the term that theyâve coined for exceptionally large platforms such as Facebook. They say that users should be given the power to choose a recommendation algorithm that is not based on their behavioural profile â e.g. a feed that is organised chronologically instead. Iâm now actually getting quite tired of saying this: giving users MORE controls isnât always good, and neither are chronological feeds.
Chronological feeds simply reward volume (just post more to get your stuff seen)
As a user, Iâm fed up of being told that I am âempoweredâ just because I have an extra set of toggles and radio buttons to look at before I can get on with my day. Please do not patronise me by saying âopting out is as easy as opting inâ; it most likely isnât, and even if it was, I wouldnât consider it empowering.
đ”ïžÂ On âdata sharing with authorities and researchersâ: On this page, if you skip down to âNew obligationsâ youâll notice that this rule once again only applies to very large platforms â the gatekeepers. The obvious criticism here is that large platforms should not give law enforcement any kind of special access to the huge wells of data and insights that theyâve built up over the years, just because they ask for it. But also:
The language on why researchers should get access is pretty vague. They essentially say âso that they can scrutinise how it all worksâ. Okay, and then what? Itâs quite clear that large platforms are working very much as intended â and the resulting consequences arenât very good. It feels like too little too late to now be asking âoh okay but how did you achieve these results?â
Giving researchers access to the data that a company like Facebook holds sort of elevates them out of their pit of shame, and up to a kind of âspecial research databaseâ status. Rather, shouldnât we be trying to stop any future entities from holding so much data and power in one place?
đ€čđ» Other stuff thatâs worth mentioning:
Most of the rules donât seem to apply to what they call âintermediary servicesâ. This includes network infrastructure, e.g. internet service providers. ISPs literally control our access to the internet, our connection speeds, and even what we see (e.g. there will be unsophisticated parental controls that are buried deep in some settings somewhere).
I have a feeling that the focus isnât so much on key infrastructure because this regulation seems to be mostly concerned with allowing smaller online platforms to start up, scale up, and then thrive. Which is fine, I guess, but if thatâs the scope for this new legislation, itâs not surprising that itâs not particularly radical or interesting.
That will be all for this week â well done for making it to the bottom! Have a great weekend and remember: donât even THINK about buying in the dip.