Linked List: September 7, 2020

Monday, 7 September 2020

Bryan Irace on Instagram’s Continuing Descent Into a Facebook-Like Algorithm-Driven Garbage Experience ★

Bryan Irace, on Twitter:

This recent @instagram change — replacing photos that you’ve already seen from those that you follow with misc. algorithmic trash — is so user-hostile that numerous family members who never think twice about software UX have independently asked me what happened to their apps.

One didn’t even notice the “View Older Posts” button, despite it being front and center. Just that photos of e.g. his grandkids were overnight replaced with nonsense.

There’s an apt slogan for the service Instagram has devolved into under Facebook’s steady hand: “Photos of your friends and loved ones, replaced with nonsense. Welcome to Instagram.”

‘Trump Emerges as Inspiration for Germany’s Far Right’ ★

Not the sort of headline you want to see.

Vote.

‘Gross Domestic Misery Is Rising’ ★

Paul Krugman:

But the stock market isn’t the economy: more than half of all stocks are owned by only 1 percent of Americans, while the bottom half of the population owns only 0.7 percent of the market.

Jobs and G.D.P., by contrast, sort of are the economy. But they aren’t the economy’s point. What some economists and many politicians often forget is that economics isn’t fundamentally about data, it’s about people. I like data as much as, or probably more than, the next guy. But an economy’s success should be judged not by impersonal statistics, but by whether people’s lives are getting better.

And the simple fact is that over the past few weeks the lives of many Americans have gotten much worse.

Vote.