Curation and Editorial Policies: Useful and Are Net Positives
July 8, 2025
No AI, just the dinobaby expressing his opinions to Zillennials.
The write up “I Deleted My Second Brain.” The author is Joan Westenberg. I had to look her up. She is writer and entrepreneur. She sells subscriptions to certain essays. Okay, that’s the who. Now what does the essay address?
It takes a moment to convert “Zettelkasten slip” into a physical notecard, but I remembered learning this from the fellows who were pitching a note card retrieval system via a company called Remac. (No, I have no idea what happened to that firm. But I understand note cards. My high school debate coach in 1958 explained the concept to me.)
Ms. Westenberg says:
For years, I had been building what technologists and lifehackers call a “second brain.” The premise: capture everything, forget nothing. Store your thinking in a networked archive so vast and recursive it can answer questions before you know to ask them. It promises clarity. Control. Mental leverage. But over time, my second brain became a mausoleum. A dusty collection of old selves, old interests, old compulsions, piled on top of each other like geological strata. Instead of accelerating my thinking, it began to replace it. Instead of aiding memory, it froze my curiosity into static categories. And so… Well, I killed the whole thing.
I assume Ms. Westenberg is not engaged in a legal matter. The intentional deletion could lead to some interesting questions. On the other hand, for a person who does public relations and product positioning, deletion may not present a problem.
I liked the reference to Jorge Luis Borges (1899 to 1986) , a writer with some interesting views about the nature of reality. As Ms. Westenberg notes:
But Borges understood the cost of total systems. In “The Library of Babel,” he imagines an infinite library containing every possible book. Among its volumes are both perfect truth and perfect gibberish. The inhabitants of the library, cursed to wander it forever, descend into despair, madness, and nihilism. The map swallows the territory. PKM systems promise coherence, but they often deliver a kind of abstracted confusion. The more I wrote into my vault, the less I felt. A quote would spark an insight, I’d clip it, tag it, link it – and move on. But the insight was never lived. It was stored. Like food vacuum-sealed and never eaten, while any nutritional value slips away. Worse, the architecture began to shape my attention. I started reading to extract. Listening to summarize. Thinking in formats I could file. Every experience became fodder. I stopped wondering and started processing.
I think the idea of too much information causing mental torpor is interesting for two reasons: [a] digital information has a mass of sorts and [b] information can disrupt the functioning of an information processing organ; that is, the human brain.
The fix? Just delete everything. Ms. Westenberg calls this “destruction by design.” She is now (presumably) lighter and more interested in taking notes. I think this is the modern equivalent of throwing out junk from the garage. My mother would say, after piling my ball bat, scuffed shoes, and fossils into the garbage can, “There. That feels better.” I would think because I did not want to suffer the wrath of mom, “No, mother, you are destroying objects which are meaningful to me. You are trashing a chunk of my self with each spring cleaning.” Destruction by design may harm other people. In the case of a legal matter, destruction by design can cost the person hitting delete big time.
What’s interesting is that the essay reveals something about Ms. Westenberg; for example, [a] A person who can destroy information can destroy other intangible “stuff” as well. How does that work in an organization? [b] The sudden realization that one has created a problem leads to a knee jerk reaction. What does that say about measured judgment? [c] The psychological boost from hitting the delete key clears the path to begin the collecting again. Is hoarding an addiction? What’s the recidivism rate for an addict who does the rehabilitation journey?
My major takeaway may surprise you. Here it is: Ms. Westenberg learned by trial and error over many years that curation is a key activity in knowledge work. Google began taking steps to winnow non-compliant Web sites from its advertising program. The decision reduces lousy content and advances Google’s agenda to control in digital Gutenberg machines. Like Ms. Westenberg, Google is realizing that indexing and saving “everything” is a bubbling volcano of problems.
Librarians know about curation. Entities like Ms. Westenberg and Google are just now realizing why informed editorial policies are helpful. I suppose it is good news that Ms. Westenberg and Google have come to the same conclusion. Too bad it took years to accept something one could learn at any library in five minutes.
Stephen E Arnold, July 8, 2025
Worthless College Degrees. Hey, Where Is Mine?
July 4, 2025
Smart software involved in the graphic, otherwise just an addled dinobaby.
This write up is not about going “beyond search.” Heck, search has just changed adjectives and remains mostly a frustrating and confusing experience for employees. I want to highlight the information (which I assume to be 100 percent dead accurate like other free data on the Internet) about the “17 Most Useless College Degrees Employers Don’t Want Today.” Okay, high school seniors, pay attention. According to the estimable Finance Buzz, do not study these subjects and — heaven forbid — expect to get a job when you graduate from an online school, the local college, or a big-time, big-bucks university; I have grouped the write up’s earthworm list into some categories; to wit:
Do gooder work
- Criminal justice
- Education (Who needs an education when there is YouTube?)
Entertainment
- Fashion design
- Film, video, and photographic arts
- Music
- Performing arts
Information
- Advertising
- Creative writing (like Finance Buzz research articles?)
- Communications
- Computer science
- Languages (Emojis and some English are what is needed I assume)
Real losers
- Anthropology and archaeology (I thought these were different until Finance Buzz cleared up my confusion)
- Exercise science
- Religious studies
Waiting tables and working the midnight check in desk
- Culinary arts (Fry cook until the robots arrive)
- Hospitality (Smile and show people their table)
- Tourism (Do not fall into the volcano)
Assume the write up is providing verifiable facts. (I know, I know, this is the era of alternative facts.) If we flash forward five years, the already stretched resources for law enforcement and education will be in an even smaller pickle barrel. Good for the bad actors and the people who don’t want to learn. Perhaps less beneficial to others in society. I assume that one can make TikTok-type videos and generate a really bigly income until the Googlers change the compensation rules or TikTok is banned from the US. With the world awash in information and open source software available, who needs to learn anything. AI will do this work. Who in the heck gets a job in archaeology when one can learn from UnchartedX and Brothers of the Serpent? Exercise. Play football and get a contract when you are in middle school like talented kids in Brazil. And the cruise or specialty restaurant business? Those contracts are for six months for a reason. Plus cruise lines have started enforcing no video rules on the staff who were trying to make day in my life videos about the wonderful cruise ship environment. (Weren’t these vessels once called “prison ships”?) My hunch is that whoever assembled this stellar research at Finance Buzz was actually but indirectly writing about smart software and robots. These will decimate many jobs in the idenfied
What should a person study? Nuclear physics, mathematics (applied and theoretical maybe), chemistry, biogenetics, materials science, modern financial management, law (aren’t there enough lawyers?), medicine, and psychology until the DRG codes are restricted.
Excellent way to get a job. And in what field was my degree? Medieval religious literature. Perfect for life-long employment as a dinobaby essayist.
Stephen E Arnold, July 4, 2025
AI Side Effect: Some of the Seven Deadly Sins
June 25, 2025
New technology has been charged with making humans lazy and stupid. Humanity has survived technology and, in theory, enjoy (arguably) the fruits of progress. AI, on the other hand, might actually be rotting one’s brain. New Atlas shares the mental news about AI in “AI Is Rotting Your Brain And Making You Stupid.”
The article starts with the usual doom and gloom that’s unfortunately true, including (and I quote) the en%$^ification of Google search. Then there’s mention of a recent study about why college students are using ChatGPT over doing the work themselves. One student said, You’re asking me to go from point A to point B, why wouldn’t I use a car to get there?”
Good point, but sometimes using a car isn’t the best option. It might be faster but sometimes other options make more sense. The author also makes an important point too when he was crafting a story that required him to read a lot of scientific papers and other research:
“Could AI have assisted me in the process of developing this story? No. Because ultimately, the story comprised an assortment of novel associations that I drew between disparate ideas all encapsulated within the frame of a person’s subjective experience. And it is this idea of novelty that is key to understanding why modern AI technology is not actually intelligence but a simulation of intelligence.”
Here’s another pertinent observation:
“In a magnificent article for The New Yorker, Ted Chiang perfectly summed up the deep contradiction at the heart of modern generative AI systems. He argues language, and writing, is fundamentally about communication. If we write an email to someone we can expect the person at the other end to receive those words and consider them with some kind of thought or attention. But modern AI systems (or these simulations of intelligence) are erasing our ability to think, consider, and write. Where does it all end? For Chiang it’s pretty dystopian feedback loop of dialectical slop.”
An AI driven world won’t be an Amana, Iowa (not an old fridge), but it also won’t be dystopian. Amidst the flood of information about AI, it is difficult to figure out what’s what. What if some of the seven deadly sins are more fun than doom scrolling and letting AI suggest what one needs to know?
Whitney Grace, June 25, 2025
We Browse Alongside Bots in Online Shops
May 23, 2025
AI’s growing ability to mimic humans has brought us to an absurd milestone. TechRadar declares, “It’s Official—The Majority of Visitors to Online Shops and Retailers Are Now Bots, Not Humans.” A recent report from Radware examined retail site traffic during the 2024 holiday season and found automated programs made up 57%. The statistic includes tools from simple scripts to digital agents. The more evolved the bot, the harder it is to keep it out. Writer Efosa Udinmwen tells us:
“The report highlights the ongoing evolution of malicious bots, as nearly 60% now use behavioral strategies designed to evade detection, such as rotating IP addresses and identities, using CAPTCHA farms, and mimicking human browsing patterns, making them difficult to identify without advanced tools. … Mobile platforms have become a critical battleground, with a staggering 160% rise in mobile-targeted bot activity between the 2023 and 2024 holiday seasons. Attackers are deploying mobile emulators and headless browsers that imitate legitimate app behavior. The report also warns of bots blending into everyday internet traffic. A 32% increase in attack traffic from residential proxy networks is making it much harder for ecommerce sites to apply traditional rate-limiting or geo-fencing techniques. Perhaps the most alarming development is the rise of multi-vector campaigns combining bots with traditional exploits and API-targeted attacks. These campaigns go beyond scraping prices or testing stolen credentials – they aim to take sites offline entirely.”
Now why would they do that? To ransom retail sites during the height of holiday shopping, perhaps? Defending against these new attacks, Udinmwen warns, requires new approaches. The latest in DDoS protection, for example, and intelligent traffic monitoring. Yes, it takes AI to fight AI. Apparently.
Cynthia Murrell, May 23, 2025
Can Digital Disgust Transcend Information Overload?
May 5, 2025
Our society has become awash in information. Though much of it is useless, many of us have trouble disengaging even when we want to. The temptation of instant distraction is too strong, and its instruments are always at hand. Perhaps the secret lies in “Developing Digital Disgust.”
Blogger Christopher Butler has a risqué but apt comparison for this moment in our culture: He asserts information is to wisdom as pornography is to real intimacy. Porn, he writes, portrays physical connection but creates emotional distance. Information overload is similar: When we are bombarded by data, each piece of knowledge loses meaning. Butler observes:
“When we feel overwhelmed by information — anxious and unable to process what we’ve already taken in — we’re realizing that ‘more’ doesn’t help us find truth. But because we have also established information as a fundamental good in our society, failure to keep up with it, make sense of it, and even profit from it feels like a personal moral failure. There is only one way out of that. We don’t need another filter. We need a different emotional response to information. We should not only question why our accepted spectrum of emotional response to information — in the general sense — is mostly limited to the space between curiosity and desire, but actively develop a capacity for disgust when it becomes too much. And it has become too much. Some people may say that we just need better information skills and tools, not less information. But this misses how fundamentally our minds need space and time to turn information into understanding. When every moment is filled with new inputs, we can’t fully absorb, process, and reflect upon what we’ve consumed. Reflection, not consumptions, creates wisdom. Reflection requires quiet, isolation, and inactivity.”
Yes. And also boredom is said to be the “gateway to creativity.” So why not dump the smartphone, stop streaming, and read books? Maybe even talk to people IRL? As with any addiction, change can be harder than it sounds. Butler suggests a shift in perspective. We must recognize that our attention is now a sort of currency and develop a sense of disgust at companies’ constant efforts to steal it. That disgust may help us put aside our devices and reconnect with the physical world. And ourselves.
Cynthia Murrell, May 5, 2025
Another Grousing Googler: These Wizards Need Time to Ponder Ethical Issues
May 1, 2025
No AI. This old dinobaby just plods along, delighted he is old and this craziness will soon be left behind. What about you?
My view of the Google is narrow. Sure, I got money to write about some reports about the outfit’s technology. I just did my job and moved on to more interesting things than explaining the end of relevance and how flows of shaped information destroys social structures.
This Googzilla is weeping because one of the anointed is not happy with the direction the powerful creature is headed. Googzilla asks itself, “How can we replace weak and mentally weak humans with smart software more quickly?” Thanks, OpenAI. Good enough like much of technology these days.
I still enjoy reading about the “real” Google written by a “real” Googlers and Xooglers (these are former Googlers who now work at wonderfully positive outfits like emulating the Google playbook).
The article in front of me this morning (Sunday, April20, 2025) is titled “I’ve Worked at Google for Decades. I’m Sickened by What It’s Doing.” The subtitle tells me a bit about the ethical spine of the author, but you may find it enervating. As a dinobaby, I am not in tune with the intellectual, ethical, and emotional journeys of Googlers and Xooglers. Here’s the subtitle:
For the first time, I feel driven to speak publicly, because our company is now powering state violence across the globe.
Let’s take a look at what this Googler asserts about the estimable online advertising outfit. Keep in mind that the fun-loving Googzilla has been growing for more than two decades, and the creature is quite spritely despite some legal knocks and Timnit Gebru-type pains. Please, read the full “Sacramentum Paenitentiae.” (I think this is a full cycle of paenitentia, but as a dinobaby, I don’t have the crystalline intelligence of a Googler or Xoogler.)
Here’s statement one I noted. The author contrasts the good old days of St. Paul Buchheit’s “Don’t be evil” enjoinder to the present day’s Sundar & Prabhakar’s Comedy Show this way:
But if my overwhelming feeling back then was pride, my feeling now is a very different one: heartbreak. That’s thanks to years of deeply troubling leadership decisions, from Google’s initial foray into military contracting with Project Maven, to the corporation’s more recent profit-driven partnerships like Project Nimbus, Google and Amazon’s joint $1.2 billion AI and cloud computing contract with the Israeli military that has powered Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
Yeah, smart software that wants to glue cheese on pizzas running autonomous weapons strikes me as an interesting concept. At least the Ukrainian smart weapons are home grown and mostly have a human or two in the loop. The Google-type outfits are probably going to find the Ukrainian approach inefficient. The blue chip consulting firm mentality requires that these individuals be allowed to find their future elsewhere.
Here’s another snip I circled with my trusty Retro51 ball point pen:
For years, I have organized internally against Google’s full turn toward war contracting. Along with other coworkers of conscience, we have followed official internal channels to raise concerns in attempts to steer the company in a better direction. Now, for the first time in my more than 20 years of working at Google, I feel driven to speak publicly, because our company is now powering state violence across the globe, and the severity of the harm being done is rapidly escalating.
I find it interesting that it takes decades to make a decision involving morality and ethicality. These are tricky topics and must be considered. St. Augustine of Hippo took about three years (church scholars are not exactly sure and, of course, have been known to hallucinate). But this Google-certified professional required 20 years to figure out some basic concepts. Is this judicious or just an indication of how tough intellectual amorality is to analyze?
Let me wrap up with one final snippet.
To my fellow Google workers, and tech workers at large: If we don’t act now, we will be conscripted into this administration’s fascist and cruel agenda: deporting immigrants and dissidents, stripping people of reproductive rights, rewriting the rules of our government and economy to favor Big Tech billionaires, and continuing to power the genocide of Palestinians. As tech workers, we have a moral responsibility to resist complicity and the militarization of our work before it’s too late.
The evil-that-men-do argument. Now that’s one that will resonate with the “leadership” of Alphabet, Google, Waymo, and whatever weirdly named units Googzilla possesses, controls, and partners. As that much-loved American thinker Ralph Waldo-Emerson allegedly said:
“What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.”
I am not sure I want this Googler, Xoogler, or whatever on my quick recall team. Twenty years to figure out something generally about having an ethical compass and a morality meter seems like a generous amount of time. No wonder Googzilla is rushing to replace its humanoids with smart software. When that code runs on quantum computers, imagine the capabilities of the online advertising giant. It can brush aside criminal indictments. Ignore the mewing and bleating of employees. Manifest itself into one big … self, maybe sick, but is it the Googley destiny?
Stephen E Arnold, May 1, 2025
Honesty and Integrity? Are You Kidding Me?
April 23, 2025
No AI, just the dinobaby himself.
I read a blog post which begins with a commercial and self promotion. That allowed me to jump to the actual write up which contains a couple of interesting comments. The write up is about hiring a programmer, coder, or developer right now.
The write up is “Tech Hiring: Is This an Inflection Point?” The answer is, “Yes.” Okay, now what is the interesting part of the article? The author identifies methods of “hiring” which includes interviewing and determining expertise which no longer work.
These methods are:
- Coding challenges done at home
- Exercises done remotely
- Posting jobs on LinkedIn.
Why don’t these methods work?
The answer is, “Job applicants doing anything remotely and under self-supervision cheat. Okay, that explains the words “honesty” and “integrity” in the headline to my blog post.
It does not take a rocket scientist or a person who gives one lecture a year to figure out what works. In case you are wondering, the article says, “Real person interviews.” Okay, I understand. That’s the way getting a job worked before the remote working, Zoom interviews, and AI revolutions took place. Also, one must not forget Covid. Okay, I remember. I did not catch Covid, and I did not change anything about my work routine or daily life. But I did wear a quite nifty super duper mask to demonstrate my concern for others. (Keep in mind that I used to work at Halliburton Nuclear, and I am not sure social sensitivity was a must-have for that work.)
Several observations:
- Common sense is presented as a great insight. Sigh.
- Watching a live prospect do work yields high value information. But the observer must not doom scroll or watch TikToks in my opinion.
- Allowing the candidate to speak with other potential colleagues and getting direct feedback delivers another pick up truck of actionable information.
Now what’s the stand out observation in the self-promotional write up?
LinkedIn is losing value.
I find that interesting. I have noticed that the service seems to be struggling to generate interest and engagement. I don’t pay for LinkedIn. I am 80, and I don’t want to bond, interact, or share with individuals whom I will never meet in the short time I have left to bedevil readers of this Beyond Search post.
I think Microsoft is taking the same approach to LinkedIn that it has to the problem of security for its operating systems, the reliability of its updates, and the amazingly weird indifference to flaws in the cloud synchronization service.
That’s useful information. And, no, I won’t be attending the author’s one lecture a year, subscribing to his for fee newsletter, or listening to his podcast. Stating the obvious is not my cup of tea. But I liked the point about LinkedIn and the implications about honesty and integrity.
Stephen E Arnold, April 23, 2025
JudyRecords: Is It Back or Did It Never Go Away?
April 22, 2025
Believe it or not, no smart software. Just a dumb and skeptical dinobaby.
I was delighted to see that JudyRecords is back online. Here’s what the service says as of April 19, 2025:
Judyrecords is a 100% free nationwide search engine that lets you instantly search hundreds of millions of United States court cases and lawsuits.judyrecords has over 100x more cases than Google Scholar and 10x more cases than PACER, the official case management system of the United States federal judiciary.As of Jul 2022, judyrecords now features free full-text search of all United States patents from 1/1/1976 to 07/01/2022 — over 8.1 million patents in total.
My thought is that lawyers, law students, and dinobabies like me will find the service quite useful.
The JudyRecords’ Web site adds:
The first 500K results are displayed instead of just the first 2K.
- murder – 926K cases
- fraud – 2.1 million cases
- burglary – 3.7 million cases
- assault – 8.2 million cases
Most people don’t realize that the other “free” search engines limit the number of hits shown to the user. The old-fashioned ideas of precision and recall are not operative with most of the people whom I encounter. At the Googleplex, precision and recall are treated like a snappy joke when the Sundar & Prabhakar Comedy Show appears in a major venue like courtrooms.
If you want to control the results, JudyRecords provides old-fashioned and definitely unpopular methods such as Boolean logic. I can visualize the GenZs rolling their eyes and mouthing, “Are you crazy, old man?”
Please, check out JudyRecords because the outstanding management visionaries at LexisNexis, Thomson Reuters, and other “professional” publishers will be taking a look themselves.
Stephen E Arnold, April 22, 2025
Meta a Great Company Lately?
April 10, 2025
Sorry, no AI used to create this item.
Despite Google’s attempt to flood the zone with AI this and AI that, Meta kept popping up in my newsfeed this morning (April 10, 2025). I pushed past the super confidential information from the US District Court of Northern District of California (an amazing and typically incoherent extract of super confidential information) and focused on a non-fiction author.
The Zuck – NSO Group dust up does not make much of a factoid described in considerable detail in Wikipedia. That encyclopedia entry is “Onavo.” In a nutshell, Facebook acquired a company which used techniques not widely known to obtain information about users of an encrypted app. Facebook’s awareness of Onavo took place, according to Wikipedia, prior to 2013 when Facebook purchased Onavo. My thought is that someone in the Facebook organization learned about other Israeli specialized software firms. Due to the high profile NSO Group had as a result of its participation in certain intelligence-related conferences and the relatively small community of specialized software developers in Israel, Facebook may have learned about the Big Kahuna, NSO Group. My personal view is that Facebook and probably more than a couple of curious engineers learned how specialized software purpose-built to cope with mobile phone data and were more than casually aware of systems and methods. The Meta – NSO Group dust up is an interesting case. Perhaps someday someone will write up how the Zuck precipitated a trial, which to an outsider, looks like a confused government-centric firm facing a teenagers with grudge. Will this legal matter turn a playground-type of argument about who is on whose team into an international kidney stone for the specialized software sector? For now, I want to pick up the Meta thread and talk about Washington, DC.
The Hill, an interesting publication about interesting institutions, published “Whistleblower Tells Senators That Meta Undermined U.S. Security, Interests.” The author is a former Zucker who worked as the director of global public policy at Facebook. If memory serves me, she labored at the estimable firm when Zuck was undergoing political awakening.
The Hill reports:
Wynn-Williams told Hawley’s panel that during her time at Meta: “Company executives lied about what they were doing with the Chinese Communist Party to employees, shareholders, Congress and the American public,” according to a copy of her remarks. Her most explosive claim is that she witnessed Meta executives decide to provide the Chinese Communist Party with access to user data, including the data of Americans. And she says she has the “documents” to back up her accusations.
After the Zuck attempted to block, prevent, thwart, or delete Ms. Wynn-Williams’ book Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism from seeing the light of a Kindle, I purchased the book. Silicon Valley tell-alls are usually somewhat entertaining. It is a mark of distinction for Ms. Wynn-Williams that she crafted a non-fiction write up that made me downright uncomfortable. Too much information about body functions and allegations about sharing information with a country not getting likes from too many people in certain Washington circles made me queasy. Dinobabies are often sensitive creatures unless they grow up to be Googzillas.
The Hill says:
Wynn-Williams testified that Meta started briefing the Chinese Communist party as early as 2015, and provided information about critical emerging technologies and artificial intelligence. “There’s a straight line you can draw from these briefings to the recent revelations that China is developing AI models for military use,” she said.
But isn’t open source AI software the future a voice in my head said?
What adds some zip to the appearance is this factoid from the article:
Wynn-Williams has filed a shareholder resolution asking the company’s board to investigate its activity in China and filed whistleblower complaints with the Securities and Exchange Administration and the Department of Justice.
I find it fascinating that on the West Coast, Facebook is unhappy with intelware being used on a Zuck-purchased service to obtain information about alleged persons of interest. About the same time, on the East coast, a former Zucker is asserting that the estimable social media company buddied up to a nation-state not particularly supportive of American interests.
Assuming that the Northern District court case is “real” and “actual factual” and that Ms. Wynn-Williams’ statements are “real” and “actual factual,” what can one hypothesize about the estimable Meta outfit? Here are my thoughts:
- Meta generates little windstorms of controversy. It doesn’t need to flood the zone with Google-style “look at us” revelations. Meta just stirs up storms.
- On the surface, Meta seems to have an interesting public posture. On one hand, the company wants to bring people together for good, etc. etc. On the other, the company could be seen as annoyed that a company used his acquired service to do data collection at odds with Meta’s own pristine approach to information.
- The tussles are not confined to tiny spaces. The West Coast matter concerns what I call intelware. When specialized software is no longer “secret,” the entire sector gets a bit of an uncomfortable feeling. Intelware is a global issue. Meta’s approach is in my opinion spilling outside the courtroom. The East Coast matter is another bigly problem. I suppose allegations of fraternization with a nation-state less than thrilled with the US approach to life could be seen as “small.” I think Ms. Wynn-Williams has a semi-large subject in focus.
Net net: [a] NSO Group cannot avoid publicity which could have an impact on a specialized software sector that should have remained in a file cabinet labeled “Secret.” [b] Ms. Wynn-Williams could have avoided sharing what struck me as confidential company information and some personal stuff as well. The book is more than a tell-all; it is a summary of what could be alleged intentional anti-US activity. [c] Online seems to be the core of innovation, finance, politics, and big money. Just forty five years ago, I wore bunny ears when I gave talks about the impact of online information. I called myself the Data Bunny. and, believe it or not, wore white bunny rabbit ears for a cheap laugh and make the technical information more approachable. Today many know online has impact. From a technical oddity used by fewer than 5,000 people to disruption of the specialized software sector by a much-loved organization chock full of Zuckers.
Stephen E Arnold, April 10, 2025
A TikTok Use Case: Another How To
April 7, 2025
Another dinobaby blog post. Eight decades and still thrilled when I point out foibles.
Social media services strike me as problematic. As a dinobaby, I marvel at the number of people who view services through a porthole in their personal submarine. Write ups that are amazed at the applications of social media which are negative remind me that there are some reasons meaningful regulation of TikTok-type services has not been formulated. Are these negative use cases news? For me, nope.
I read “How TikTok Is Emerging As an Essential Tool for Migrant Smugglers.” The write up explains how a “harmless” service can be used for criminal activities. The article says:
At a time when legal pathways to the U.S. have been slashed and criminal groups are raking in money from migrant smuggling, social media apps like TikTok have become an essential tool for smugglers and migrants alike. The videos—taken to cartoonish extremes—offer a rare look inside a long elusive industry and the narratives used by trafficking networks to fuel migration north.
Yep, TikTok is a marketing tool for people smugglers. Wow! Really?
Is this a surprise? My hunch is that the write up reveals more about the publication and the researchers than it does about human smugglers.
Is this factoid unheard of?
A 2023 study by the United Nations reported that 64% of the migrants they interviewed had access to a smart phone and the internet during their migration to the U.S.
A free service used by millions of people provides a communications fabric. Marketing is the go-to function of organizations, licit and illicit.
Several observations:
- Social media — operating in the US or in countries with different agendas — is a tool. Tools can be used for many purposes. Why wouldn’t bad actors exploit TikTok or any other social media service.
- The intentional use of a social media service for illegal purposes is wide spread. LinkedIn includes fake personas; Telegram offers pirated video content; and Facebook — sure, even Facebook — allows individuals to advertise property for sale which may not come with a legitimate sales receipt from the person who found a product on a door step in an affluent neighborhood. Social media invites improper activity.
- Regulation in many countries has not kept space with the diffusion of social media. In 2025, worrying about misuse of these services is not even news.
The big question is, “Have we reached a point of no return with social media?” I have been involved in computers and digital information for more than a half century. The datasphere is the world in which we live.
Will the datasphere evolve? Yes, the intentional use of social media is shifting toward negative applications. For me that means that for every new service, I do not perceive a social benefit. I see opportunities for accelerating improper use of data flows.
What strikes me about the write up is that documenting a single issue is interesting, but it misses what and how flows of information in TikTok-like service operate. Who are the winners? Who are the losers? And, who will own TikTok and the information space for its users?
Stephen E Arnold, April 7, 2025
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