Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
As so often happens, a government attempt to quash the use of technology it doesn’t like has made that tech more popular than ever. A week after the Department of Homeland Security intimidated a New Hampshire public library into shutting down its Tor relay, about a dozen other libraries nationwide have shown interest in running…
The adblockalypse has begun. Just one day after Apple released iOS 9 into the wild, users are flocking to the App Store and downloading adblockers. According to AppAnnie.com, three of the top five paid apps are adblockers — meaning people are paying from 99 cents to $2.99 a download. Taking the top slot is Peace for…
It’s Episode 16 of Press Publish, the Nieman Lab podcast! My guest today is Jason Kint. Jason is CEO of Digital Content Next, which I confess I liked better under its old name, the Online Publishers Association. It’s the trade organization representing most of the country’s largest online publishers. I wanted to talk to Jason…
So let’s talk about ad blocking. You might think the conversation about ad blocking is about the user experience of news, but what we’re really talking about is money and power in Silicon Valley. And titanic battles between large companies with lots of money and power tend to have a lot of collateral damage. iOS…
The release of iOS 9 and its content-blocking features yesterday has reminded everyone of what they can gain from blocking adverts, including better battery life, a faster machine, and a better web browsing experience devoid of frustrating adverts. And by some stroke of luck the NYTimes has decided that yesterday was the best time to…
âSee if there’s a way to be sustainable (especially at small scale) while accommodating concerns. Maybe tracking is more ok on smaller sites?â Anil Dash on Twitter: “See if there’s a way to be sustainable (especially at small scale) while accommodating concerns. Maybe tracking is more ok on smaller sites?”.
In case the hysteria over ad-blocking software wasn’t already at a fever pitch, Apple’s new iOS version is now in the wild—complete with built-in support for ad blocking—and several ad blockers are topping the most-installed list. Is this an apocalypse for publishers, especially small ones? And if it is, does installing and using an ad…
In a 1997 segment on the short-lived tech TV show The Site, host Soledad O’Brien sits at a bar in front of a laptop computer, talking to Dev Null, a full-scale human avatar with frosted fuchsia tips and a soul patch. Motion-captured from the show’s second host backstage, he swivels from side to side, arms…
“We’ve got another lawsuit,” my friend and client Lana* told me over the phone. “Really?” I was honestly surprised. “What about all that diversity training everyone went through?” “Well, apparently we need to do it again.” Lana was the head of Human Resources for Bedia, a company in the media industry that felt, at times,…
Over the last few weeks and months there has been increasing alarm that today, September 16, is a critical one for publishers — and by critical, I mean the diagnosis that most publishers will soon be in critical condition. After all, today Apple releases iOS 9 with support for “content blocking extensions” which will effectively…