The ever-entertaining Fifth Circuit has recently upheld a strange Texas law that forbids most kinds of social media moderation. (Techdirt explains many of the reasons the court is wrong, so I won't try.) This brings us to the trendy question of whether Facebook, Twitter, et al. should be treated as common carriers. You can make a good argument to separate the point-to-point data transport from the ISP and make the former common carriage. more
According the the report, a survey of 1,000 consumers found that the majority believe the Internet will become full of pointless domain names (65% of those polled), messy and confusing (57%), too complex to navigate (46%) and out of control (41%). Two-thirds of the 100 UK businesses surveyed are still unaware that liberalization is happening, which is a concern, considering the opportunities and potential risks that it presents." more
With the COVID-19 health crisis evolving so quickly, it's hard to predict the extent of the long-term impact on business and the economy. While every business sector is facing different considerations, it's safe to say all are handling challenges from supply chain interruptions, rapid shifts to remote work, and massive changes in consumer spending and communication habits. more
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley's School of Information have released a report raising concern over website monitoring practices which appear to be taking advantage of critical loopholes in privacy protection. According to the study, most popular websites in the United States "all share data with their corporate affiliates and allow third parties to collect information directly by using tracking beacons known as 'Web bugs' -- despite the sites' claims that they don't share user data with third parties." more
In these competitive times and with the holiday's looming, your Website experience needs to give customers a "warm and fuzzy" feeling. That is, it should be available and fast, with no major hiccups. Website monitoring is essential in delivering just that. How do you find a monitoring tool? Just set the monitoring budget, find a vendor, call the sales department and buy yourself some monitoring, right? Whoa, not so fast. more
GoDaddy.com has reported today that the Web hosting outage that involved thousands and possibly millions of websites on Monday was due to internal issues and did not involve any attacks by hackers. The outage lasted for about four hours and affected mainly small-business sites. GoDaddy.com hosts more than 5 million websites. more
The Internet is contributing more to the American economy than the entire federal government, according to a new study by the Boston Consulting Group. The Internet accounted for $684 billion, or 4.7% of all U.S. economic activity in 2010, according to latest report released by Boston Consulting Group. more
The importance of online presence continues to grow exponentially. More and more of our personal and professional endeavors are conducted online. Because of this, the ability to ensure a good experience for our online friends and customers also is increasing rapidly. At its core, load testing is nothing more than ensuring your online presence is ready for the number of visitors you expect. It's simple to explain, but historically it's been anything but simple, or easy to afford. more
Over at Techdirt, Mike Masnick did a great post a few weeks back on a theme I've written about before: peoples' tendency to underestimate the robustness of open platforms. "Once people have a taste for what that openness allows, stuffing it back into a box is very difficult. Yes, it's important to remain vigilant, and yes, people will always attempt to shut off that openness, citing all sorts of "dangers" and "bad things" that the openness allows..." more
Real-Time Entertainment (streaming video and audio) traffic is now responsible for over 70% of North American downstream traffic in the peak evening hours on fixed access networks, according to a new report from Sandvine. Five years ago, video and audio streaming accounted for less than 35%. more
Elon Musk is a self-proclaimed "free speech absolutist" which leads some to worry that Twitter will be open to the sort of thing one finds at gab.com if his purchase of the company is completed. I have no idea what Musk plans to do with Twitter but let me offer some optimistic speculation. For a start, I don't believe Musk will use Twitter to advance right-wing candidates or policy. more
Security researchers have identified a new phishing attack method designed to trick users into surrendering confidential information after they have logged on to an online banking, brokerage, or other sensitive website. The technique, called In Session Phishing, can be used to inject into all major browsers legitimate looking Pop Up messages using malicious JavaScript that request passwords, account numbers, etc., on behalf of the trusted website. more
The list includes Internet Pioneer, Vint Cerf; eBay Founder, Pierre Omidyar; Facebook's Dustin Moskovitz; Reddit's Alexis Ohanian; Medium's Ev Williams; Apple's Steve Wozniak; and venture capitalists Vinod Khosla and Chris Sacca. more
The signs are that the Australian Government and Google are close to a compromise. The Government's main demands stay in place, but some of the details will be changed. This allows the Government to claim victory, while the damage to Google will be limited... Publishers will, in one way, or another be paid for news, either through a payment based on the value of the news and the value of the Google search facility. more
The hiQ ruling erased legal protections against commercial scraping, leaving infrastructure providers to absorb escalating costs. Without federal action defining data misappropriation, a free-rider AI economy could undermine open networks, investment, and long-term data integrity. more