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Administrative note: I'm updating my Hot Sauce Selects Weekly playlist... every week on Tuesday. Up to episode #5 already. Subscribe!
This one is all about things on the internet. Let's go!
Artist Simon Weckert created a very cool thingp. Here's the write-up:
99 second hand smartphones are transported in a handcart to generate virtual traffic jam in Google Maps.Through this activity, it is possible to turn a green street red which has an impact in the physical world by navigating cars on another route to avoid being stuck in traffic.
Weckert's piece explores the power, information, and control dynamics at play in a ubiquitous, connected, very late capitalist world. Fun!
Facebook finally launched its Off-Facebook Activity tool, which tells you which companies are supplying the platform with info about your non-Facebook activity (website visits, purchase history). Facebook matches that info to your profile and better targets ads.
The tool is not, uhhh, an easy to find. Recode has a good write-up about the various ways you can (kinda sorta) control some of that info. Sorta.
Seamless, Grubhub, Postmates, and our online delivery platform overlords are changing the restaurant business in a number of ways. They're turning restaurants that don't deliver—explicitly so—into unwitting delivery sources.
They aggregate restaurants onto the platform unbeknownst to them. When customers put in an order, that's passed on to the driver, who places an order inside the restaurant and, and then deliver it to the original customer.
Is that bad? Probably! But there's more. Then, they're creating "ghost kitchens," which are "physical kitchens that offer dishes from multiple "brands" from a single location through deliver apps." It's all kind of eerie, tbh. Ghost food.
Are you a fan of mega-rich white dudes? Do you want a more private channel to hear their brilliant thoughts and billion-dollar quotes? Then do I have a social network for you!
Column is a proposed subscription-based network started by the guy who killed Gawker, and is seeking investment from those rich people to effectively lead their own private communities on the platform. Users can share posts and media in private or public spaces, while letting them pay to join a rich person's community, where they'd see more private content.
I hate all of it!
That's it for today. I'm hoping to revisit reading and writing on social media and digital third places soon. But drop me a line to say hello! I love when y'all email and respond and just tell me what’s new in your world.
Kisses.