Reality 2.0

By Katherine Druckman and Doc SearlsTechnology

Reality 2.0 episodes

November 20, 2020Episode 49: Parler, Ownership, and Open Source
Doc Searls, Katherine Druckman, Petros Koutoupis, and Kyle Rankin talk Parler and platform lock-in, the concept of data, software, and hardware ownership, and the open source social contract.
Show notes:
(49s):
“I think the first one, maybe the that's that we could cover is, well, let's see, how do I put this without causing too much controversy? That's just the idea of siloed social, silos of any kind, but in particular social media and perceived censorship as it, as it applies to social media. That's a, that's a hot topic right now.”
(1m 59s):
“Do you not know about parlor? No. Oh, this is going to be a great episode!”
(3m 54s):
“And so, as a result, a lot of people who are concerned about censorship on Twitter and Facebook have moved over there. And, and in particular on the conservative side, just because like with any social network, there's a network effect.”
(5m 11s):
“It also reminds me of the early days of Google plus”
(8m 53s):
“I think we're moving from one moderator to, I mean, This happens on, on Mastodon quite a bit where you will have, because it's so federated and because all of the instances can in theory, talk to each other, sometimes you'll have a falling out because many Mastodon instances are more or less governed by the winds of a sysadmin who decided to spin it up.”
(10m 55s):
“It looks different to everybody. We all have our own, our own feeds are on, you know, our own preferences, our own, you know, whenever it is, I mean, it's, it's, it's shaped shifts for each of us, depending on what we've looked at and who we follow and all the rest of it. And it's by design. So there's no uniform vision to it.”
(11m 35s):
“I think you said it, Catherine did, a lot of people were sort of creeped out by Facebook, but it's only because of read a bunch of stuff about, Hey, you're not private there. And then the movie they watched that movie, you know...now they're scared of Facebook. They're not entirely sure why.”
(12m 34s):
“We don't need platforms for all this stuff. You can do this stuff without platforms.”
(15m 24s):
“So that's an interesting segue into one of the other topics that we've been talking about and that's, it's being owned by platforms instead of the other way around. And I think, you know, we all have in common that we are, we have a bit of a DIY and obviously open source mentality”
(18m 11s):
“Apple announced a new Big Sur release. And around the time that they announced the update that the update was available. So presumably people were downloading it, et cetera. People started noticing on their Macs that they were having trouble launching programs. They would try to launch an application. And sometimes it would take, you know, a minute after saying to launch before the application showed up on their local machine.”
(23m 15s):
“it really raises the issues of ownership. You know?”
(24m 42s):
“And it sounds like in many cases, you don't, if you have a Mac, you don't necessarily own that”
(24m 59s):
“I don't know if there are degrees of severity of one's lack of control over your digital products in your life.”
(28m 20s):
“And, you know, and I thought the chance that Google is going to get rid of those is pretty high Google's record of holding onto a service that people don't pay for is pretty lousy.”
(29m 40s):
“You have a bundle of rights. And, and I think that we haven't worked out yet online.”
(32m 29s):
“And this ephemeral service, which is now tied to a tangible thing, that tangible thing, which before would have different rules applied to it, like say a thermostat or whatever it is, where when the, the cloud service goes away, the company goes away.”
(33m 17s):
“For example, like this, this thing that happened this week that we already talked about with Apple, I think a lot of people didn't think about how applications launching was tethered to the cloud in any way”
(33m 48s):
“It's like the, the internet is a network of leashes and, like dog leashes with colors on them.”
(35m 48s):
“And I think it was 1890 and it was about the time they decided the right of privacy was the right to be let alone.”
(36m 52s):
“something that we've talked about many times, and that is open source, open source licensing, open source culture, open source awareness, even.”
(37m 50s):
“And people now start to question, they go, Hey, wait a second. This, this big platform is making a ton of money off of this code that I wrote, but I'm not.”
(39m 25s):
“And does it matter, does it matter what exactly we're talking about? Like, does it matter if I'm talking about contributing to something like Apache or, you know, Linux kernel, or does it matter if we're talking about some sort of web framework or library that, you know, a Facebook, a Twitter, a tic talk is using to make a lot of money, you know, that may, or even a product you just don't like, does it, does it somehow matter? I mean, obviously from a licensing perspective, it doesn't, but from an ideological perspective, does it matter?”
(41m 18s):
“And what does it even mean to contribute back to the project?”
(42m 18s):
“I think that's where the social contract starts to break down.”
(46m 10s):
“And that's supposed to be a good thing. What you want is to work with the companies that are using your software, and hopefully they will, they will release patches and fixes and improvements to your software. That's the idealized model.”
(48m 19s):
“open source licenses are pretty ubiquitous.”
(48m 33s):
“Well, you're writing code with an IDE that is probably free software. You didn't pay for it under an open-source license maybe on an OS that has similar licensing that you didn't have to work on using other people's libraries that you didn't have to write yourself from scratch all the way down to the OSTP.”
(49m 16s):
“Well, that's free software. And so the WordPress people knock on your door and like, Oh, well, and that's running on Linux. And so Linus is going to show up and what his handout, you know, it, everyone's sort of, for some reason, people think that, well, you're sitting on this entire body of work that people have put so much effort for free into to share with everyone else you're taking the benefit of that.”
(51m 13s):
I guess the ultimate question though, is at what point does, is there enough pushback that it does shift the open source community? ...at what point is it a significant enough disruption that there are enough people that are questioning the open source social contract?”
Reality 2.0 around the web:
Site/Blog/Newsletter
FaceBook
Twitter
YouTube
Mastodon
Special Guests: Kyle Rankin and Petros Koutoupis.
Support Reality 2.0
Links:
Parler - Wikipedia
— Parler is an American microblogging and social networking service launched in August 2018. Parler has a significant user base of Trump supporters, conservatives, and right-wing extremists. Posts on the service often contain far-right content, antisemitism, and conspiracy theories. Parler has been described as an alternative to Twitter, and is popular among people who have been banned from mainstream social networks or oppose their moderation policies.
davewiner.com
Scripting News
— This is Scripting News.
It's Dave Winer's blog.
Little Snitch - Makes the invisible visible!
Amazon.com: The Gift: How the Creative Spirit Transforms the World (9781984897787): Hyde, Lewis: Books
— Drawing on examples from folklore and literature, history and tribal customs, economics and modern copyright law, Lewis Hyde demonstrates how our society—governed by the marketplace—is poorly equipped to determine the worth of artists’ work. He shows us that another way is possible: the alternative economy of the gift, which allows creations and ideas to circulate freely, rather than hoarding them as commodities.
Amazon.com: COMMON AS AIR (9780374532796): Hyde, Lewis: Books
— Common as Air offers a stirring defense of our cultural commons, that vast store of art and ideas we have inherited from the past and continue to enrich in the present. Suspicious of the current idea that all creative work is "intellectual property," Lewis Hyde turns to America's Founding Fathers―men such as Adams, Madison, and Jefferson―in search of other ways to imagine the fruits of human wit and imagination. What he discovers is a rich tradition in which knowledge was assumed to be a commonwealth, not a private preserve.
macOS Big Sur launch appears to cause temporary slowdown in even non-Big Sur Macs | Ars Technica
— When an Apple device can't connect to the network but you want to launch an app anyway, the notarization validation is supposed to "soft fail"—that is, your Apple device is supposed to recognize you're not online and allow the app to launch anyway. However, due to the nature of whatever happened today, calls to the server appeared to simply hang instead of soft-failing. This is possibly because everyone's device could still do a DNS lookup on ocsp.apple.com without any problems, leading the devices to believe that if they could do a DNS lookup, they should be able to connect to the OCSP service. So they tried—and timed out.
Apple Users Got Owned – Purism
— You’ll often hear hackers say that they “owned” (or sometimes “pwned”) a computer. They don’t mean that they have the computer in their physical possession, what they mean is that they have compromised the computer and have such deep remote control that they can do whatever they want to it. When hackers own a computer they can prevent software from running, install whatever software they choose, and remotely control the hardware–even against the actual owner’s wishes and usually without their knowledge.
57 min
November 13, 2020Episode 48: The Politics of Communication
Doc Searls and Katherine Druckman talk to Professor Barbara Cherry of Indiana University about political division, legislation and regulation, technical evolution, and more.
Reality 2.0 around the web:
Site/Blog/Newsletter
FaceBook
Twitter
YouTube
Mastodon
Special Guest: Barbara Cherry.
Support Reality 2.0
Links:
Official Website - Yuval Noah Harari
Amazon.com: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (9780062316110): Harari, Yuval Noah: Books
Liberal Democracy and the Social Acceleration of Time: Scheuerman, William E.: 9780801878855: Amazon.com: Books
Report of the Senate Select Committee on Interstate Commerce ...: (with ... - United States. Congress. Senate. Select Committee on Interstate Commerce - Google Books
Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History: Andersen, Kurt: 9780812978902: Amazon.com: Books
1 hr 5 min
November 06, 2020Episode 47: Revolutions
Doc Searls, Katherine Druckman and Petros Koutoupis talk to Hadrian Zbarcea about revolutions, both technical and other.
Reality 2.0 around the web:
Site/Blog/Newsletter
FaceBook
Twitter
YouTube
Mastodon
Special Guests: Hadrian Zbarcea and Petros Koutoupis.
Support Reality 2.0
Links:
A Ransomware Attack Has Struck a Major US Hospital Chain | WIRED
— UNIVERSAL HEALTH SERVICES, a hospital and health care network with more than 400 facilities across the United States, Puerto Rico, and United Kingdom, suffered a ransomware attack early Sunday morning that has taken down its digital networks at locations around the US. As the situation has spiraled, some patients have reportedly been rerouted to other emergency rooms and facilities and had appointments and test results delayed as a result of the attack.
An emergency room technician at one UHS-owned facility tells WIRED that their hospital has moved to all-paper systems as a result of the attack.
Cyber Attack Suspected in German Woman’s Death - The New York Times
— Prosecutors believe the woman died from delayed treatment after hackers attacked a hospital’s computers. It could be the first fatality from a ransomware attack.
Better lives with Drupal-powered healthcare technologies | Opensense Labs
— So how does Drupal come into play here? Dexcom, which is the brand of CGM, has one of its platforms powered by Drupal and Omnipod’s website is built on Drupal as well.
DrupalCon Nashville 2018: Driesnote - YouTube
54 min
October 30, 2020Episode 46: Facial Recognition, Surveillance Technology, and the Balance of Power
Doc Searls, Katherine Druckman, and Kyle Rankin talk about facial recognition and surveillance technology in the hands of individuals, and how that affects the balance of power.
Reality 2.0 around the web:
Site/Blog/Newsletter
FaceBook
Twitter
YouTube
Mastodon
Special Guest: Kyle Rankin.
Support Reality 2.0
Links:
Activists Turn Facial Recognition Tools Against the Police - The New York Times
— These activists say it has become relatively easy to build facial recognition tools thanks to off-the-shelf image recognition software that has been made available in recent years. In Portland, Mr. Howell used a Google-provided platform, TensorFlow, which helps people build machine-learning models.
Fawkes
— The SAND Lab at University of Chicago has developed Fawkes1, an algorithm and software tool (running locally on your computer) that gives individuals the ability to limit how unknown third parties can track them by building facial recognition models out of their publicly available photos.
Mass Extraction - Upturn
— To search phones, law enforcement agencies use mobile device forensic tools (MDFTs), a powerful technology that allows police to extract a full copy of data from a cellphone — all emails, texts, photos, location, app data, and more — which can then be programmatically searched. As one expert puts it, with the amount of sensitive information stored on smartphones today, the tools provide a “window into the soul.”
Doc Searls Weblog · About face
— We know more than we can tell.
Vivian Maier Photographer | Official website of Vivian Maier | Vivian Maier Portfolios, Prints, Exhibitions, Books and documentary film
Welcome to the 21st Century: How To Plan For The Post-Covid Future - O'Reilly Media
— So too, when we look back, we will understand that the 21st century truly began this year, when the COVID19 pandemic took hold. We are entering the century of being blindsided by things that we have been warned about for decades but never took seriously enough to prepare for, the century of lurching from crisis to crisis until, at last, we shake ourselves from the illusion that our world will go back to the comfortable way it was and begin the process of rebuilding our society from the ground up.
59 min
October 23, 2020Episode 45: Social Media Regulation and Journalism
Doc Searls, Katherine Druckman, and Petros Koutoupis talk social media regulation and its relationship to journalism and the threat to Section 230.
Special Guest: Petros Koutoupis.
Support Reality 2.0
Links:
FCC chairman says he'll seek to regulate social media under Trump's executive order - CNN
— The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will draft regulations intended for social media companies following a petition earlier this year by the Trump administration, the agency's chairman said Thursday.
In a tweet, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai indicated he will move forward with a rulemaking to "clarify" Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934, which currently acts as a legal shield for tech companies' handling of user generated content.
Executive Order
— Here is the full text of President Trump's executive order relating to social media, published by the White House on Thursday May 28, 2020.
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act | Electronic Frontier Foundation
— Tucked inside the Communications Decency Act (CDA) of 1996 is one of the most valuable tools for protecting freedom of expression and innovation on the Internet: Section 230.
Official Title 47 Section 230 PDF document
— 230(c) - (1) Treatment of publisher or speaker
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher
or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
47 U.S. Code § 230 - Protection for private blocking and screening of offensive material
— Reference from Cornell Law.
Opinion | Tech Companies Are Destroying Democracy and the Free Press - The New York Times
— Ad revenue that used to support journalism is now captured by Google and Facebook, and some of that money supports and spreads fake news.
BIG by Matt Stoller
Tim Hwang - Subprime Attention Crisis
— Tim Hwang is a writer and researcher based in New York.
He is the author of Subprime Attention Crisis, a book about the bubble of online advertising. He is currently a research fellow at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) at Georgetown University.
Defending the Caveman | A Broadway Comedy We Can All Relate To
IU Inc. » Archive » IU Media School professor’s paper was influential in FCC net neutrality decision
55 min
October 16, 2020Episode 44: Podcasts Killed the Radio Star
Doc Searls, Katherine Druckman, and Petros Koutoupis discuss the evolution of podcasting vs. radio.
Show Notes:
00:00:57 Please subscribe to our Newsletter - a reminder :)
00:01:35 Radio vs Podcasting, is it like Godzilla vs Bambi?
00:06:51 What makes podcasting so accessible?
00:20:27 Where we host our podcast and a shoutout to fireside.fm
00:41:27 "Linux is free if your time has no value" --Jamie Zawinski
00:45:08 Scotch time, beer o'clock, or Blursday...
Special Guest: Petros Koutoupis.
Support Reality 2.0
Links:
How podcasting became a new front in the streaming wars | Financial Times
— Once a nerdy niche industry populated by talk radio hosts, podcasting has become something everyone wants to get into, with big tech companies and record labels pouring hundreds of millions into landing the next big audio show.
jwz.org
— Jamie Zawinski
Podcast Hosting and Analytics - Welcome to Fireside!
— Podcast hosting.
47 min
October 09, 2020Episode 43: Ad Tracking Runs Deep
Doc Searls and Katherine Druckman talk to Dr. Augustine Fou about his privacy analysis app, Page X-Ray, ad tracking, and data privacy.
Show Notes:
00:02:17 Page Xray and Blacklight
00:07:27 While you interact with one web page, who else is harvesting your information?
00:14:13 Listen to which tracker Katherine used for about 10 minute, and promptly removed!
00:15:57 What is malvertising
00:18:55 What about the browser extension privacy trackers?
00:25:54 Who should use PageXray?
00:32:30 What are some good consumer tools?
00:42:26 What is "fingerprinting" and how does a site "fingerprint" you?
00:48:21 Covering your "privates"
00:51:32 Marketers are chasing the shiny object called Digital
00:53:26 what is the ratio of registered domains vs websites vs humans visitors vs real ad impressions?
Special Guest: Dr. Augustine Fou.
Support Reality 2.0
Links:
Episode 13: Surveillance Marketing
— Doc Searls and Katherine Druckman talk to Dr. Augustine Fou about surveillance marketing, ad tech, and privacy.
Page X-Ray Data Privacy Analysis Featured in Episode 43
— A brief overview of Page X-Ray.
FouAnalytics - Ads By Domain
— Privacy Analytics tool from Dr. Augustine Fou.
Blacklight – The Markup
— A Real-Time Website Privacy Inspector
Privacy Badger
— Privacy extension from the EFF.
Ghostery: Online Privacy Made Easy
— Ghostery demystifies online privacy by exposing the forces that lurk behind your screen and enabling you to block them.
Secure, Fast & Private Web Browser with Adblocker | Brave Browser
— The Brave browser.
1 hr
October 02, 2020Episode 42: Camera Drones, Ad Trackers, and That Netflix Movie
Doc Searls, Katherine Druckman, Kyle Rankin, and Petros Koutoupis talk about Amazon's new flying camera, ad tech, and The Social Dilemma.
00:01:27 The spying based advertising business is on it's way out
00:05:55 The Amazon's April fools joke that is now a product
00:12:14 Doc's issue with 'Alexa' listening to you all the time
00:15:09 California's CCPA
00:16:14 Kyle's perspective on the Amazon drone
00:21:36 Scale of mass surveillance
00:30:28 Facial recognition
00:34:12 Katherine is looking for some good news...
00:35:58 Normalization of fear mongering
00:40:05 When can a company legitimately collect your personal information
00:41:12 What do regulators really hope to do
00:42:32 Lets talk about "the movie"...
Special Guests: Kyle Rankin and Petros Koutoupis.
Support Reality 2.0
Links:
Blacklight
— A Real-Time Website Privacy Inspector - Who is peeking over your shoulder while you work, watch videos, learn, explore, and shop on the internet? Enter the address of any website, and Blacklight will scan it and reveal the specific user-tracking technologies on the site—and who’s getting your data. You may be surprised at what you learn.
Amazon wants to put a Ring drone inside your home and LOL WTF?
— Not merely content to film both the outside and inside of your home from fixed points, the company announced Thursday a Ring drone that will fly around the interior of your home, shooting and livestreaming video in the process. Say hello to the Always Home Cam, a product that's very existence poses the question: What the absolute fuck is Amazon thinking?
52 min
September 25, 2020Episode 41: TikTok and App Censorship
Doc Searls and Katherine Druckman talk to Kyle Rankin and Petros Koutoupis about TikTok and who controls your phone.
Notes:
00:00:37 The new contraband - TikTok
00:04:34 Is the US wanting to "play" China and censor?
00:08:19 Will this become an ugly precedent?
00:15:37 We're concerned about the implementation of this ban
00:17:25 The Social Dilemma on Netflix
00:21:11 Your phone is your castle
00:33:10 Defining the harm from mere content
00:44:59 Final thoughts - Portrait mode video
00:48:20 How does a visually impaired person use a phone? See link.
Special Guests: Kyle Rankin and Petros Koutoupis.
Support Reality 2.0
Links:
Trump admin orders TikTok, WeChat gone from app stores on Sunday
— President Donald Trump signed executive orders banning TikTok and WeChat on August 6. Those orders gave the Department of Commerce a 45-day window to outline what, exactly, a ban would entail. That 45-day period expires on Sunday, September 20, so that is when the bans take effect.
Not only will app stores not be allowed to permit new downloads, but Internet hosting services and content delivery network services will also be banned from "enabling the functioning or the optimization" of the apps, and "directly contracted or arranged Internet transit or peering services" will also be prohibited. All platforms will also be prohibited from providing services through WeChat specifically that allow anyone to transfer funds or process payment within the US.
Your Phone Is Your Castle
— If your home is your physical castle, your phone is your digital castle. More than any other computer, your phone has become the most personal of personal computers and holds the most sensitive digital property a person has
The Castle Doctrine
— Since you’re reading this online, let me ask, what’s your house here? What sacred space do you strongly guard, and never suffer to be violated with impunity?
Video: Voiceover and Braille screen input.
— Kristy Viers using voiceover and braille screen input to compose a tweet and show navigation.
51 min
September 18, 2020 Episode 40: Normalizing Surveillance
Doc Searls, Katherine Druckman, and Petros Koutoupis talk about Amazon's Alexa for landlords program.
Show notes:
00:00:23 For starters, let's begin with Normalization of Surveillance.
00:50:00 Amazon Alexa for landlords.
00:10:15 Is this really jus another way to discover new markets?
00:19:03 Doc the mechanic?!
00:27:49 If you're young do you really not care about privacy?
00:30:49 A couple of things that will clue people on privacy, are: Health data, and political issues
Link mentioned: https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2020/09/amazons-alexa-for-landlords-is-a-privacy-nightmare-waiting-to-happen/
Special Guest: Petros Koutoupis.
Support Reality 2.0
34 min

About Reality 2.0

From the publisher's feed

Join Privacy and Open Source advocates, Doc Searls and Katherine Druckman, as they navigate the new digital world, covering topics related to digital privacy, cybersecurity, digital identity, as well…

Share Reality 2.0

Sign up to save your podcasts

Reality 2.0

Reality 2.0 episodes

About Reality 2.0