Unattributed

A pebble on a sandy beach.

Introduction

There has been a bit of buzz in the tech community about the resurrection of the Pebble Smartwatch. Eric Migicovsky's post about bringing the watch back, and his postmortem on his previous experience with bringing the watch to market are quite compelling. I do believe he has accounted for the previous failure of the company, and set reasonable expectations for reviving the brand.

However, a few points in Eric's post gave me a bit of pause. For example, the statement “You’d imagine that smartwatches have evolved considerably since 2012.” Well, yes, in the 12 years since the original Pebble quite a few things have changed.

As I read further, I got the feeling that maybe this project hadn't really been thought out all that well. Maybe it was just an immediate reaction to Google making the PebbleOS code Open Source. That is a good place to start, but I think this project needs to be thought about in a different light.

The Smartwatch market is now largely a duopoly between Samsung and Apple, with everyone else (Garmin, Fitbit, Amazfit and a host of Chinese brands) sweeping up the crumbs behind them. So, what is it going to take for the new Pebble to not be sweeping alongside all the others, and instead find itself a solid place in the market?

I do not claim to be an expert in the field of smartwatches, watches or horology. However, over the past year I have learned quite a bit as I stumbled my way into collecting watches. So, I'd like to provide some opinions on what would really set the new Pebble apart from the competition.

My Journey Into Watch Collecting

As I stated in the introduction, I started collecting watches about a year ago. Most of my collection has focuses on Japanese watches: Casio, Seiko, Citizen, Kuoe, Orient, etc. But why watches? And why Japanese watches? The answer to that lays in the research I did before I started buying watches.

Initially I interested in hybrid watches. A hybrid watch was a typical quartz watch with the face replaced with an LCD panel that could display various information. This allowed the watch to be used for displaying notifications, health tracking, etc. while still having the appearance of a mechanical watch.

I quickly found that the hybrid watch market wasn't surviving the onslaught of Apple's and Samsung's Smartwatches. Most of the watch manufacturers were discontinuing their hybrid watches, and many were narrowing their smartwatch offerings.

So, I started looking at Smartwatches. But as I dug into them, I found most of them were using Google's WearOS. And while WearOS supports encrypting the communication between the watch and phone, I had every reason to believe there were API endpoints going to Google. And, since the device would be tethered to an Android phone, that meant my personal medical information could be used by Google for whatever purposes they see fit.

But still, I thought it might be worth the risk if I could mitigate the potential issue through other means. Then I started looking at the applications these watches supported. Many of them required a subscription to really have full functionality.

At this point, the little enthusiasm I had for smartwatches was quickly waning. Then the final nail in the coffin came when I started looking at the applications. So many of them literally state that they are sending your information to third parties for marketing and other purposes, even (especially?) after the user signs up for a subscription. This is insane in my opinion. It would be one thing if my information was being sent to my health provider, I would be okay with that. But to suggest that it is going to be sent to anyone else for any purpose is a non-starter.

The fact is that medical professionals have a set of laws known as HIPAA which they have to comply with. This limits the exposure of your personal and medical information. However, the companies providing these applications are not bound by these laws, so there is nothing to ensure your privacy when using them.

And, that was it, I mentally snapped a bit. I didn't want to wade any further into a minefield where my most personal information was going to be put at risk, all for the benefit of a bunch of corporations to do God knows what with the information.

Aside: A story from about 10 years ago has been stuck in my mind... A teenager found out she was pregnant and went to Target to buy prenatal vitamins. She used her mother's credit card to buy the vitamins. She didn't tell her parents that she was pregnant. Target used the information from the credit card to generate a list of pregnant women to send marketing to... Target sent a “Congratulations on your Pregnancy” flier addressed to the other to the teenager's house. This was how the parents found out that their teenage daughter was pregnant. A truly disgusting show of the invasion of privacy that companies will do if they think it will generate more revenue for them.

Watch Collecting: A Few Lessons

So, in rejecting the technology of the current smartwatch minefield, I still felt that I wanted something to differentiate myself. I wanted to wear something on my wrist to tell the time, if nothing else, so I didn't have to pull out my phone just to check the time.

I started with a nostalgia pick: the Casio AE1200, aka the Casio Royale after the watch that appeared in the James Bond film “Octopussy”. (The film watch was actually a Seiko G757, which is no longer in production.) But, I didn't want to wear a digital watch all the time — it just felt a bit too nerdy. So, I started buying other watches: other Casios, some Timex's, a Citizen and a Seiko.

I decided (somewhat mistakenly) to focus on collecting Casio watches. Why Casio? Well, I noticed something quirky and challenging about Casio. They tend to only partially release some of their watches in the North American market. For example, the AQ-230: there are four models released in North America, but on Casio's International website there are thirteen variants of this watch.

And that seemed like a fun challenge to me: find Casio watches that either (a) weren't available in the North American market, or (b) had limited releases in North America, and find ways to acquire the whole line. This was going to be the “fun” part of my collection.

But I was also going to have a more serious collection. Initially, I watched a lot of YouTube watch collecting videos. Many of the watches were impressive: the fit, finish and aesthetics of watches from Breguet, Audemars Piguet, Rolex, Cartier, Breitling, IWC, Omega, Patek Philippe, etc. were amazing. But the prices were outrageous. Entry level prices for many of them were $10,000, or something close to it. And, these were watches with automatic mechanical movements... Meaning that they need to be wound, either by wearing them, or using an external device to wind them for you. And because they were mechanical they would need routine servicing (just like a car), and from what I gathered the servicing was expensive.

But that wasn't the biggest issue I had while watching these videos. There was this sense of snobbery from both the video creators, and the viewers (commenters) on the videos. As I pieced things together, there was a whole historical context for this snobbery, and the growth of what I deemed to be an unhealthy community. (Something I will talk about in a separate piece.)

Now, this whole background has gotten a bit long, but bear with me for a couple of more paragraphs to get to a few points...

Photo of a Casio MTP-RS100D with a black face on a man's wrist. Photo by Unattributed. License: Creative Commons 4.0: BY-NC-SA.

One of my Casio MTP-RS100D watches. This is the black face version. There are four other variants.

While I was learning about other watches, my Casio collection started growing, and I came to a couple of fascinating models. The first was the MTP-RS100D. These are simple three hand watches, but they have a few interesting features. The first is watch face. It's completely unique, not imitating any other watches that I had (or have) seen. Second, it's a solar watch, with the ability to store enough energy to operate for four months between charges. (Typical automatic watches can only store enough energy for 40–70 hours of operation without winding.) And the price was under $100. Admittedly there are some not-so-positive aspects to the watch. For example the bracelet isn't all that high quality, and replacing it is difficult due to the way it integrates into the case. Also, I wish it had a date complication (or even more a day and date complication), but some see the lack of this kind of complication to be a positive. The clasp isn't all that good either. And it has a mineral glass crystal instead of sapphire. But, for under $100 it is above and beyond the value of many $500 and even $1000 watches.

Casio Lineage LCW-M100TS. The watch the stunned me.

Then came the absolute bombshell watch for me: the Casio Lineage LCW-M100TS. This is a hybrid “Ana-Digi” watch, meaning that it's face is that of an analog watch, but it incorporates a digital display. Honestly, I initially didn't like a lot of the “Ana-Digi” watches until I saw this one. This watch has a similar look to the MTP-RS100D, but the dial features a simple sunburst pattern, and the integrated LCD panel. But, that's not the impressive part of this watch...it's all the features that it has: world time, timer, full auto-calendar (up to 2099), backlight, solar (with an energy saving feature that allows it to operate for up to 22 months on a single charge), stopwatch, alarm(s), atomic clock synchronizing, automatic timezone adjustment. And then there is the case and bracelet: all titanium, with a sapphire crystal. The price? Depending on the variant $150-$200 USD. Lineage watches are a “JDM” (Japanese Domestic Market) line of watches. So, getting them imported and still being a fraction of the price of similar watches from Seiko, Citizen, and others is quite remarkable. Not to mention that they are fraction of the price of many Swiss and European watches, and are just generally a more solid value. (There are some other things that I will discuss in another article that put them above literally any other mechanical watch.)

Of course, these are not smartwatches. They don't have health tracking sensors, and they don't integrate with your phone for notifications, or media control, or anything like that. However, from my perspective it's important to actually place smartwatches in the context to the broader watch market, as will become clear throughout the remainder of this article.

Now, there is a Casio-shaped elephant that I am not covering here: the G-Shock line. They are really forerunner to the smartwatch, having many of the features that the Pebble is focused on bringing out. And, in fact, they also have models that incorporate some of the important features of the above watches. But, their Ana-Digi watches don't look as nice as the Lineage to me, and I personally didn't want to wear a digital watch all the time...so I haven't gone too far into them yet (although I do have an GBD-200).

Next we have to talk about the Apple-shaped elephant of the smartwatch world: the Apple Watch.

The Apple Watch Is More Impressive Than You Know

Deutsches-uhrenmuseum, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The disruption to watchmaking caused by the Apple Watch was not a completely new event in the annals of watchmaking. The first such event was the Christmas Surprise of 1969 when Seiko released the Astron: the first mass market quartz watch. The Astron achieved a greater accuracy than the majority of mechanical watches, and was able to run for up to a year on a single battery. Something no mechanical watch could achieve.

This event sent shock waves through the Swiss and European watchmaking industries, but many watchmakers seemingly ignored the importance of the watch. Within a few years the mechanical watches had lost a large portion of their market share as quartz watches became easier to manufacture, were more readily available to the public, and were much less expensive than mechanical watches.

This caused a large scale reorganization, consolidation and refocusing of the mechanical watchmaking industry. Instead of being the ubiquitous objects that many people needed, they became niche objects and luxury items.

Apple Watch photo by Terminator216, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Then just 45 years after the release of the Astron, Apple released the first Apple Watch. In a few short years, the Apple Watch's market share grew to an astonishing level, taking the majority share of quartz watch market (both analog and digital watches), as well as many of the health tracking devices, and further eroding a portion of the luxury mechanical watchmaking industry. (Apple managed to out-sell all Swiss watchmakers combined in 2020.)

Many watchmakers and watch collectors and aficionados dismissed the Apple Watch as not being a real or serious watch. There are several reasons for this: (a) the device doesn't “feel” like a watch, (b) they don't see its primary use is as a timekeeping device, instead focusing on other functions like health monitoring, media control, and notification display, as well as a myriad of other applications the watches can run, and © the fact that it is tethered to a cell phone to provide much of this functionality.

And while certainly all of this is true, it is a way to dodge the fact that Apple went to great lengths to make the Apple Watch a timekeeping piece that exceeds COSC certification standards, and most of the quartz watches on the market. In an article in Mashable from 2015 (Here's how Apple synchronized all your Apple Watches), Apple's VP of Technology, Kevin Lynch, outlined a number of the features of the Apple Watch that are fairly impressive.

First, the Apple Watch does actually have a self-contained quartz movement. Next, in order to maintain that accuracy they curated their own global network of Stratum One NTP (Network Time Protocol) servers (these servers are only a single step away from an atomic clock). Third they implemented a temperature control crystal oscillator to compensate for changes in temperature. The end result is the Apple Watch is accurate within 50 milliseconds (0.05 seconds) of Universal Standard Time. While this might not sound impressive consider that typical quartz watches from Casio are accurate to approximately +/– 20 seconds per month (which is around 0.5 seconds a day), and COSC Certified mechanical watches average −4/+6 seconds per day. (Ed. Note: the article doesn't mention the quartz movement. However, the crystal oscillator temperature control is only necessary if there is a quartz movement.)

Certainly, there are quartz watches that rival the Apple Watch in terms of accuracy. In fact, there are some watches that actually have their own miniaturized atomic clocks built into them, which are considered to be the most accurate in the world, but they are also exceptionally expensive (the Hoptrof No. 16 was $24,000 in 2015).

Now with all this context, lets talk about the Pebble and some of the issues that it faces.

Reviving The Pebble Smartwatch

The Pebble smartwatch was definitely ahead of it's time in 2013 when it came to market (after doing a Kickstarter fundraising campaign in 2012). It actually hit the market two years before the Apple Watch, so it's only real competition were some of the wearable devices from the likes of IBM, Sony Ericson, and Fossil (amongst other early attempts at bringing smartwatches to market in the 1990s and 2000s).

Today, however, I think it is best to take a long look at both the Smartwatch and Wristwatch markets to identify the key items that a revived Pebble should try to achieve. Here is the list of things that I would want rePebble to consider as they work on reviving their Smartwatch:

• Power usage / recharging
• Privacy & App Issues
• Standalone usage Vs. Tethering
• Timekeeping Accuracy
• There is still a Pebble

Let's take a look at each of these topics.

There Is Still a Pebble Smartwatch

I hadn't mentioned this so far, but while researching and gathering materials for writing this piece, I came across a website for a company that still is selling watches under the Pebble brand. This doesn't appear to some fly-by-night operation either. My guess would be that through the long process of properties being split up and sold off this company somehow ended up with the right to use the Pebble name.

The company appears to be in Bengaluru, India. I don't personally know the status of India when it comes to copyright, trademarks, or other so-called “intellectual property” issues, it would seem to me that it would likely be best to avoid a situation where there could be a conflict. Don't really want to see lawyers having to get involved in some form of international trademark legal fight before you've even gotten your product to market.

Power Usage

The current state of cellphone and smartwatch power usage is absolute insanity to me. The fact that most of these devices need to be charged via a cable or “wireless” connection is utterly ridiculous. Solar wristwatches have existed since 1972 (The History of Solar Powered Watches). Over the past 50 years, the advancements in solar technology by Seiko, Casio and especially Citizen have made it to the point where there's no need to make adjustments to many of these watches for months at a time.

Now, I know you might be thinking “but the power requirements of a smartwatch are different from a wristwatch”, and I would partially agree with that. However, when we look at hybrid watches they have a fairly intense power usage to actually run a motor to move a second hand, which could deplete the battery. So, look at watches like the Casio Lineage watch mentioned above: it will sleep at night in order to preserve the power it would use to run the motor... But it still keeps the other internal functions operational so it is always in sync.

The advancements in microprocessor manufacturing (getting down to 4nm process nodes) along with the advancements SoC technology should enable the Pebble to go a lot further than it has in the past.

The lowered power consumption of embedded processors and SoC's, along with improvements in solar technology and energy storage should allow creating a device that can recharge itself from available light on a daily basis. And, given that most customers will likely wear these watches daily, there shouldn't be an issue.

I do understand that there will be technical challenges to this decision. But even those challenges likely have solutions. We have sleep modes, connections can be closed when not in use, etc. I don't think those challenges should prevent creating a smartwatch that is solar-powered.

Privacy Issues

As I noted above, one of the biggest issues I had with many of the Smartwatches on the market today were the fitness tracking applications. The amount of information that the user is having to give up in order to track their health information is insane.

If there is going to be a specific app for the new Pebble, please make it open source. Also, please contribute to the existing open source applications that are available (one of the best seems to be Gadgetbridge, which I'm guessing you are aware of since it has Pebble support).

I think the biggest thing to do in this area is: develop the new Pebble as a privacy respecting application. Do not place your customers in the position of having a recommended application that will sell their information. This is something that is worth emphasizing in announcements regarding the device. And, reaching out to privacy respecting open source applications as you work through the development process will help generate more good will.

Standalone Usage

While one of the more appealing aspects to smartwatch customers is the ability to tether their watch to their phone to enable some extended functionality, the new Pebble should make it a priority to be a “watch” at it's core before being “smart”.

Let me explain my thought process here. The wristwatch market has created devices that have stood the test of time, quite literally. There are watches from the 1500s that are still in existence today (although whether they are functional, or accurate is another matter). We regularly see watches that are 50–100 years old that are still functioning.

Today many smartwatches (and cellphones) are seen as disposable devices. Every few years people run out to buy the latest Samsung Galaxy watch or Apple Watch because of “cool new feature X”. And many of the old devices end up in landfills.

But, this doesn't need to be the case. Yes, adding new features and releasing new devices is part of the business cycle. But committing to a longer lifespan is something to aspire to.

There are two ways to do this: (1) develop the firmware and software in a manner that allows for older devices to be updated, and (2) design the hardware and software in a manner that it can have minimal functionality past it's EOL as a smart device.

In other words: focus on the watch functionality. Even when the device cannot support being tethered to a phone anymore, let it exist as a top-quality wristwatch. Have it use GPS and Atomic Clock radio signals to keep time in sync. Have built in timers, alarms, stop watch, perpetual calendar, etc. features.

I have this extreme scenario in the back of my head when it comes to wristwatches: how useful is a watch going to be if the national infrastructure were to disappear? What if I can't get batteries for my watches? What if there is no one to service a mechanical movement? How long could my watch last and be useful?

This is where I think design choices are important. Solar charging allows the use of a watch for probably a good ten to twenty years without batteries. Making a digital quartz movement removes the need for maintenance of the movement. Being able to sync to an atomic clock via radio signal (not over the internet) means I should have accuracy for a while (the military radios aren't likely to go offline immediately).

Even if that kind of scenario doesn't happen, a smartwatch that can function without a phone is still useful. It can be passed down to family members, especially children who don't need to have all the smartwatch functionality.

This is the kind of thought and design that will make for a device that will be able to last for a long time.

Timekeeping Accuracy

I mentioned this above, and these two points are actually interconnected. A smartwatch should be able to keep more accurate time than a cellphone. This should be somewhat obvious: runners and joggers will want to have accurate times for their activities. Anyone that needs to use a stopwatch will want it to be as accurate as possible.

It takes more than just a simple quartz movement to enable this functionality. Syncing the time to an atomic clock, accounting for drift and skew, using temperature, altitude, air pressure and other sensors to compensate for external environmental issues that can affect the accuracy of the movement / calibre is important.

As I mentioned above, Apple spent a lot of time developing a number of these items for their Watch. While it may (or may not) be as impressive ten years after the first Apple Watch hit the shelves, the fact is that timekeeping was a core focus when developing their watch. The new Pebble should take the same approach, leveraging as much watchmaking knowledge and technology as possible.

Conclusion

Thank you if you have read this far. I know that it was a lot to take in, and there were a lot of thoughts that I have put on the page in the hopes that it will help to guide the developers of the new Pebble. But, I think this article can go a lot further with how we think about both watches and connected devices.

The fact is that a lot of watches have a very long life cycle. Yes, they do need maintenance – whether it's the changing of a battery in a quartz watch, or re-calibration / maintenance of a mechanical movement.

It's my hope, however, that this article shows anyone who is interested in watches that there is a different way to go. There is a way to have modern features and longevity, instead of treating smartwatches as disposable tech. The concept that a watch should be treated in the same manner as a piece of a fast-fashion clothing is disturbing. We can do better. We need to do better.

The new Pebble offers that opportunity.

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Categories: #Technology, #Features, #Opinion, #Editorial Tags: #atomic, #atomicclock, #business, #calendar, #calibre, #device, #devices, #digital, #movement, #pebble, #quartz, #repebble, #smartwatch, #smartwatches, #solar, #stopwatch, #time, #wristwatch

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Introduction: The Story So Far…

NOTE: This article was started before NPR and PBS decided that it was time to leave Twitter.

I recently emailed NPR regarding the situation with their Twitter account being labeled as “state sponsored”. In said letter, I did bother going through and summarizing all the things that the media has put up with on Twitter in just the five months since Elon Musk’s takeover of the platform. So, here is a summary:

Since the original labeling of NPR as “state sponsored”, Twitter (really Elon Musk) has relented (somewhat) and changed the label to read “Government Funded”. This label has also been applied to PBS. (The Hill: Twitter drops ‘state-affiliated’ label from NPR after backlash) During this whole kerfuffle, one of the better known NPR stations, KCRW, decided to leave Twitter as they felt the platform was no longer a trustworthy.

At the same time, Twitter also started blocking replies, likes, and retweets to posts that contain links to Substack articles (Ars Technica: The dumb reason Twitter won’t allow retweeting tweets linking to Substack). The reason for this is a perceived challenge by a new Substack feature called “Notes” that is similar to Twitter in appearance, but is tied to Substack’s subscription model (The Verge: Substack is getting tweets — err, ‘Notes’).

Meanwhile, it is being reported that Twitter is no longer restricting the reach of Chinese and Russian state sponsored media outlets (Semafore: Twitter is no longer policing Russian and Chinese state-backed media).

And, of course, there is the pettiness of removing The New York Times’s verified check-mark, after the news organization stated they would not be paying Musk’s exorbitant extortion to keep the mark.

But, while the assault on media outlets that has occurred over the past few days should be seen as quite alarming to the media at large, it isn’t even the beginning. All the way back in November, Playbill left Twitter citing an expanded tolerance of hate and misinformation (The Hollywood Reporter: Playbill Leaves Twitter, Says Platform Now Blurs “Actual News and Insidious Rhetoric”). CBS News halted Tweeting for a day because of the “uncertainty” about the platform.

And, in mid-December, Elon banned the accounts of reporters from the New York Times, Washington Post, Voice of America, CNN, Mashable, The Intercept and several freelance journalists over their reporting on his banning of the ElonJet account a few days earlier (The Verge: Elon Musk starts banning critical journalists from Twitter).

And, just a few weeks ago, Twitter permanently banned the 165-year-old Globe Gazette newspaper from Mason City, Iowa without giving any reason. The account was restored a day later, but they lost all of their 6K followers, and were never given a reason as to why they were banned in the first place (Des Moines Register: 165-year-old Iowa newspaper’s Twitter account restored. Why it was banned remains a mystery).

And, even more recently, Twitter blocked 122 accounts at the request of the Indian government. Those accounts included several journalists: Pieter Friedrich, Sandeep Singh, Kamaldeep Singh Brar, and Gagandeep Singh. (rest of world: Twitter blocked 122 accounts in India at the government’s request).

And finally, in the most hilarious turn of them all… The Musk-hired “journalists” Matt Taibbi and Barry Weiss have been either fired or shadow-banned on Twitter. (TechDirt: After Matt Taibbi Leaves Twitter, Elon Musk ‘Shadow Bans’ All Of Taibbi’s Tweets, Including The Twitter Files).

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Re-Interpreting The Substack Story

While I initially interpreted the Substack story as just another of Elon’s odd little petty tantrums against a company offering a new feature to compete with Twitter, I’ve re-evaluated that perspective. The fact is, his tantrum was about more than just the Notes feature. The new offering from Substack served to directly undermine Elon’s plans for his “Twitter 2.0”.

It has been widely reported that Musk is seeking to turn Twitter into his vision of an “Everything” app. This has been something of an idea that goes back to his early days when developing what later became PayPal. And recently, he has signed an agreement with eToro to expand Twitter’s offerings in financial areas, like stock quotes, crypto market tracking, etc.

But what does this have to do with Substack? While not as apparent at first, Notes cuts deeper than it first appears. Elon wants Twitter to do everything: that includes publishing, and he has been taking steps to make this a reality.

First, sometime back, he announced that there was going to be a system for creators to get payouts. Then he expanded the size of Tweets and Videos for Twitter Blue subscribers. And, just in the last week, he announced large Tweets with a 10,000-character limit, and support for italics and underlining.

When you put all of these things together, it looks more and more like part of the system he was building was going to try to compete with Substack. And that lead him to make retaliatory moves against Substack when they added Notes: he saw that as an attempt to draw potential users of his publishing platform away.

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Inflection Point

That was just an introduction to what Twitter has become where news media is concerned, since Elon Musk’s takeover. It’s a long way from the platform that was once described as the “public square” or the “town hall of the internet”. In fact, it appears that in his ideal world the journalists and reporters will turn to him to publish their work, instead of just using the platform to circulate works that are created on other (competing) platforms.

Elon’s Twitter is about controlling communication. Gaining Elon’s favor is the way to give your message a chance to be heard. And the best way to gain his favor is to (a) pay for the privilege, (b) not be critical of his statements and actions, and © make certain there isn’t someone else he favors more than you.

This is the absolute antithesis of the foundations of the free press. Elon is acting in a manner that is completely contrary to the foundation of American values. America was founded on the premise that we could have a self-governing country that wasn’t afraid of critical voices, and rejected dictatorial leadership.

Throughout the world, most countries have news media that are respected. It’s true that censorship laws, hate speech laws, and other legal barriers to completely independent news media do exist. However, for countries where the government does not directly interfere or direct the media, the threat of the current state of Twitter management should be seen as clear and imminent.

It is time for American media companies at a minimum, and global media companies to realize that they cannot and should not rely on the whims of social media companies. We are now at an inflection point. The current social media industry is turning it’s back on the forms of content and communication that the people want and need.

There have already been battles with Alphabet (Google) and Meta (Facebook) over the syndication of their content. YouTube is widely known for taking down content without reason. Instagram, TikTok, and other media companies have numerous issues that make them unreliable sources for independent news media.

Instead of focusing on communication, these companies are becoming obsessed with Artificial Intelligence, and Virtual Reality (aka the Metaverse). Neither of these are technologies that are wanted or needed by the public at large. In fact, the utility of these technologies remains dubious at best. About the only real interest in them that the media should have is in reporting on them.

So, with this inflection point what should media companies be doing?

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Leaving Twitter Is The First Step

As I sit here writing this, NPR and PBS have left Twitter. Several NPR member stations have also left Twitter. This is a start, and the best first step to take. It is time to start showing the social media companies that they aren’t needed.

But, just leaving Twitter isn’t enough. It’s time to think in a way that will allow you to be more independent and will allow you to build a presence beyond what you currently have.

What if you could have your own Twitter? Your own Instagram? Your own YouTube? And, how about the ability to have people that are on a Twitter-like platform be able to see the content posted on your website? Or what if these “Twitter-like” users could see your YouTube content?

In other words: what if there were little or no barriers between the platforms? You could publish to as many platforms as you wanted, and your audience could choose how they wanted to consume and interact with your content?

That’s where the next step comes in.

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The Fediverse Is The Next Step

You have probably already heard of Mastodon and the Fediverse. You know that Mastodon is a Twitter-like platform that millions of former Twitter users fled to after Elon Musk’s takeover. But Mastodon is only one piece of the Fediverse.

The Fediverse is actually made up of many different platforms… In fact, more platforms than the current commercial social media websites offer. There are currently over thirty platforms available as part of the Fediverse.

And, the Fediverse has been steadily growing over the past 4–5 years. Here’s a graph of the growth in the user base of the Fediverse since 2019:

Fediverse User Growth from 2019 to 2023

As you can see, just since Nov. 2022 the number of users has nearly doubled in size. And it does not show signs of stopping, with literally thousands of new accounts created every hour.

And, these users are active too, as witnessed by the growth in posts since 2019, and especially since November 2022:

Fediverse Posts growth from 2019 to 2023

Now, this is not the biggest growth that any social network has experienced. However, it is very consistent growth. This consistent growth is what should make it an appealing proposition for news organizations to get in on. This is a place where you can start finding your audience now, build and define your presence on your terms.

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Defining Your Presence

As mentioned, the Fediverse has many platforms available for any news / media organization to adopt in defining their presence. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of platforms:

• Microblogging (Twitter-like): Mastodon, Pleroma, Misskey, GotoSocial.
• Macro blogging (Facebook-like): Firendica, Hubzilla
• Video Hosting (YouTube-Like): PeerTube
• Image Sharing (Instagram/TikTok-like): Pixelfed
• Audio / Podcasting (SoundCloud-like): FunkWhale
• Video Streaming (Twitch/YouTube-Like): OwnCast
• News Aggregation (Reddit-like): Lemmy
• Books/Reading: Bookwyrm

And more. Note that the comparisons to other social media platforms are just for reference. Each platform has its own unique flavor and objectives, they aren’t attempts at cloning the commercial products.

There are more options available as well. For example, websites that are built on WordPress or Drupal have plugins available that allow content to be published directly to the Fediverse, and can (optionally) allow responses to that content to be imported as comments on your website.

The really nice thing about all of these platforms: there are existing instances (servers) available that you can use to test out the services. You don’t have to go into Fediverse blind, you can take some time and develop a plan to bring your presence to this much more open, transparent platform.

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Developing A Fediverse Adoption Plan

My recent email to NPR contained a brief overview of a plan that could be taken for building a presence on the Fediverse. The point of the plan was to make it a no-pressure situation. Small steps can be taken, and the platforms evaluated in order to make informed decisions that will make for a more successful transition and adoption of the Fediverse.

Let’s take a look at a plan that should help with a successful adoption. Note, however, there is one caveat to any planned migration: don’t compare Fediverse platforms to their commercial brethren. The reason that comparison aren’t useful is they tend to either (a) be skin-deep, and (b) they miss the real depth and usefulness of the Fediverse.

So, with that being said, here are four steps that will help make for a successful transition.

One: Join Some Existing Platforms

Your organization can start making itself known on the Fediverse by using the platforms that are already available. In particular, there are two that are dedicated to journalists and reporters:

• Journa.Host
• Newsie Social

These two platforms offer a nice starting environment for Journalists to start interacting with the Fediverse. It might seem to be slow-going at first, but with a nice introduction post, and a few posts about articles they are writing or researching, they are sure to start building a following. Many reporters / journalists from ProPublica are members of Newsie, and they have built followings in the thousands already – even the ones that haven’t posted more than one or two posts.

But, that’s an important point: they need to be active and interact on the Fediverse. There is no algorithm to recommend their accounts to anyone. Making certain they have hashtags relevant to their work in the profile and introduction post will help people find them. But, interaction is the key: being a genuine person and talking to people is the way to get a lot of value from spending time here.

Now, I mentioned Journa.host and Newsie Social for reporters and journalists. But your organization will likely want to have non-journalists join the Fediverse as well. In the “Defining Your Presence” section, I listed off over half a dozen other platforms that some will want to consider joining. I’d recommend sticking to the Microblogging and Macro blogging platforms, although something like PixelFed might be of interest too.

And, a key point to remember: you can always follow people on platforms that aren’t the one you are on. So, if you create an account on GotoSocial, you can still follow people on Journa.Host and Newsie Social, or any other instance.

There will definitely be some learning curve. But, post frequently, read through some posts under various hashtags, and interact with people, and there will be a tipping point where it all becomes a lot easier, and rewarding.

Two: Distribute Content

There are many ways to go about distributing the content you create on the Fediverse. The easy, less permanent way is to use a bot to read content from RSS feeds and post them to the Fediverse.

There are instances available specifically for this purpose, one such instance is Bots In Space. You can create accounts on this instance for each of your feeds, and set up a key to allow your RSS feeder script to publish new articles to the account. (Setting up these feeds is not something that I can explain easily in this article. However, Mastodon has excellent documentation, and there are numerous articles and examples of publishing from RSS feeds to Mastodon.)

Another way to handle this without having to set up anything is to have someone do it manually. In many cases, this is likely to not be a viable option. However, it could be a viable experiment. Say you chose to have someone post a few articles a day to an “official” account to see what kind of following and feedback they receive.

The final option is to add ActivityPub into your publishing system. Two of the more popular content management systems (WordPress and Drupal) have support for ActivityPub via plugins that are readily available. Automattic, the company behind WordPress, has hired the developer of the ActivityPub plugin and is working to implement direct support into their products.

Three: Setting Up A Fediverse Native Presence

While the first step of having some of an organization's staff use the current instances offered on the Fediverse is good, extending your organization to the Fediverse itself will have a number of long-term benefits.

For example, starting your own instance of Mastodon or another microblogging platform will allow people from your organization to have a presence that identifies them immediately with your organization. And, that instance allows you to set the standards for communication in the social world (something that is very likely already in place for your organization).

There are more benefits: you will be able to get feedback from your audience. If you choose to, you can have a customer service department as part of your presence. There are a nearly infinite number of options in this area.

But it doesn’t end there. You can add more platforms for other types of content. For example, if you have podcasts, you might want to add a FunkWhale instance. If you have video content, you might want to set up an instance of PeerTube (which would also allow you to import videos that you have already made available on YouTube). If you have a lot of photographic content, you might want to set up a Pixelfed instance.

The options are wide open. You can set up as many platforms as you want, or just have a single platform for social interaction, and use your preferred content management platform to publish your media to the Fediverse.

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Conclusion

This has been a roller-coaster of an article. From taking a brief look at all the media related events that have occurred since Elon Musk took over Twitter just six months ago, to diving deeper into the Substack story and understanding where Twitter is going under Elon Musk.

The most logical conclusion is somewhat challenging. Elon is trying to make his “everything” platform, which includes trying to attract amateur writers to publish alongside well respected news and media organizations. And, in the event that a media company isn’t willing to pay the fees that Elon wants for Twitter Blue verification, then those posts are deprioritized

(As an aside, something that we didn’t cover in this story is the changes to the API’s. They affect the media too, as many of the tools that are being used likely rely on those APIs for publishing stories. So, in the case of most media organizations, this is an additional cost beyond Twitter Blue.)

This kind of “pay for play” combined with the elevation of many writers that are anywhere from amateur to potentially incompetent is something that news media organizations should not continue to endorse. And sticking with Twitter is endorsing this new “pay for play” model.

What is even worse about this model is that it allows for the elevation of messages that are reflective of the worst parts of society. And, in fact, Elon has shown himself to be perfectly willing to align himself with people that support these kinds of messages. Bringing well respected news media outlets in line with many racists, antisemitic, sexist, and other types of speech.

So, this is the inflection point for Twitter 2.0. Elon's changes are making it more obvious that there is going to be a very different structure to Twitter – it's no longer going to be a platform where all voices are equal. It's no longer where the voices that are elevated are those that the masses deem should be elevated. It's a place where you can pay to have your voice elevated.

If this is the kind of environment that well respected news and media outlets want to be a part of, so be it. For those that don't, the Fediverse is waiting. The Fediverse offers the opportunity to engage with an audience that is open and receptive to respectful reporting. It's also self-moderating, keeping the worst messaging from being on equal footing with the worst messaging out there. And, it's a place where you can choose how your organization is represented. There are plenty of opportunities in the continuously growing Fediverse.

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Categories: #Technology, #Opinion #Editorial Tags: #fediverse, #mastodon, #media, #news, #socialmedia, #twitter

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Introduction

I don't think I've really spent any time in the past writing personal “year in review” articles on my sites. Yes, I might have done year-end looks at things like the best or most popular reviews I had written, or written about things that I felt were overlooked. But, those were on sites that had specific themes so it was appropriate, at least to the way I felt at the time.

However, a generalized look back is not something that I tend to do. But I think given the nature of Unattributed, it seems more important now. However, I don't want it to just be a listing of a bunch of news stories, or a list of things that happened during the year. I am choosing instead to write about things that felt more personal to me, for whatever reason.

Remembrances

I think the place to start is with those who are no longer with us. In particle a couple of musicians I don't feel were honored as much in life or death as they should have been.

The first was the passing of Klaus Schulze, the electronic musician who was one of the founders of what would become known as the Berlin School of electronic music. He was a pioneer, starting before synthesizers and electronic instruments were even widely available to musicians, and even if they had been, they were the subject of much ridicule amongst “serious” musicians. He got his start as the drummer in one of the early lineups of Tangerine Dream, but parted ways with them when Edgar Froese rejected the idea of introducing tape loops into their sound (which Schulze had advocated). While the two parted ways, they remained friends, and Schulze would even joke about their friendship at times. For example, Schulze once said in an interview that he and Froese had conspired to divide their world conquests by Froese touring in the West, while Schulze toured mostly in the East.

Some of the recordings that have meant the most to over the years are Audentity, Beyond Recall, Timewind and Trancefer. These were all recordings that I found at just the right times in my life where I needed the calming, minimalist effect of Klaus's compositions. In addition to these recordings I've loved The Dresden Performance, and The Dome Event since I first heard them. In reviewing his releases to write a larger piece that remains incomplete (and will likely be completely re-written before it is released) I found two more that have taken on a special place in my listening, those are In Blue and Eternal – The 70th Birthday Edition.

Anyone who loves electronic music should really listen to Klaus Schulze if they aren't already familiar with his work. A career that spanned over six decades, and has been the inspired many contemporary electronic artists deserves to be elevated by all listeners.

Another musician, and an electronic musician to boot, that passed in 2022 was Vangelis. He was probably most known for the soundtracks to Blade Runner and Chariots of Fire. However, I knew of his works since my college days, especially Albedo 0.39, China, and Opera Sauvage. But, that was just the beginning for me with his works, because I later found that he had collaborated with Jon Anderson of Yes, and had produced several albums under the name Jon and Vangelis, a partnership which saw the unlikely duo produce a hit song: “I'll Find My Way Home”, and would take a rather amusing turn as Vangelis attempted to become a member of Yes.

In picking up some of his later releases, I have found an album called The City to be absolutely spellbinding. It is such a cinematic work that I initially mistook it for a movie soundtrack. And, I really wanted to see that movie, so much so that I went looking for it on IMDB, only to later find out that The City was actually a standalone work by Vangelis.

And the final one that I wanted to mention, mostly because it wouldn't get a notice in the United States, was the passing of English actor and comedian Peter Bowles. For those who watched a lot of British TV in the 80s and 90s Bowles would be known for his roles in shows like To The Manner Born, I, Claudius, Rumpole of The Bailey, and Executive Stress. Surprisingly (to me at least) the only reason I found out of this actors passing is because of an appearance he made on The Sarah Jane Adventures, which brought him into the Doctor Who universe.

While there were many others who passed in 2022 (like Barbara Walters, Pele, Irene Cara, Christine McVie, Taylor Hawkins and Kirstie Alley, just to name a few), I feel that the above are ones that will not get nearly the attention that they should, and are worth memorializing.

My Personal Goals

So, how did I do on my goals for this past year? Honestly, not all that well. Even the smaller things that I should have been able to accomplish, like reading a reasonable number of books, or writing a lot in a journal. It just didn't happen. Then there are the bigger things: like overhauling and re-modelling this house, or getting back to the gym and working on my health in general.

Now, I won't say that all of this was an absolute failure. For example, I did actually write more in my journal last year than I had in the previous four years combined. And I can say, that there were other things that I managed to accomplish — things that I won't really talk about here. However, they were things that were related to the estates of my parents, and now that they are settled all of that can be placed in my past.

And, I realized that there is something else going on with me. There is something keeping me from getting to the bigger projects that I want, and even need, to tackle. So, this is something that I am seeking help with in the new year (I actually started a couple of months back — but I'll keep that as a goal for this year).

One of the things that I think I have recently realized is that I abandoned something that I need. I need something to keep my life in a sense of structure. I need to have something that will keep me going from day to day, keep me motivated and focused. That's what I have lost, and something that I need to find again.

Okay, enough of the personal dribble from me.

What Did I Do?

So, what things did I accomplish? Well, I managed to get most of these websites reorganized — except for a couple of them. This means that I was able to launch this site and I wrote some articles on it. Not as much as I want to write, but I did manage to publish a few pieces.

And, I got lost in messing with mechanical keyboards, and launched a site for that as well. However, I drifted away from mechanical keyboards as another of my older hobbies / interests took over: music and stereo equipment. I started writing a bit about that on here, and it's a topic that I will be returning to this year.

And, keep in mind, that most of this happened while I had other things going on in the background — so I don't blame myself for getting too distracted. :)

News Stories That Capture My Attention

So this is the last thing that I wanted to write about in here: a few of the new stories / issues that have managed to grab my attention.

The most obvious only is Elon Musk's Acquisition of Twitter, and the Ensuing Disaster. I don't know why, but there is something about a train wreck that just can grab your attention. In this case, it was the combination of not only the hilarity of some of Elon's truly disastrous decisions, but the positive effect that it has had for Mastodon specifically, and the Fediverse in general.

The January 6th Committee Hearings. I watched all of them as they were broadcast. And it was a roller-coaster. The Committee managed to pull together things that were surprising and even shocking. For example, getting documentary footage of one of the militant groups actively canvassing the capitol before the rally had even started. Seeing Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony live on camera for citizens of this country to have a real inside look at how the White House and the staff were reacting to the events as they unfolded. Having several poll workers who had been threatened for no legitimate reason to testify. Getting several State representatives to testify to the pressure campaign that Donald Trump and his agents put on them to over-turn the election results in his favor. And so much more information.

I haven't read the final report yet. That's on my list for reading soon (Like probably just after I finish the current book I started.)

Oh, and we can't forget about the further Absurdities of Donald Trump this year. First for getting raided because he took classified documents from the White House when he left. Then he started a court battle to slow down the investigation into those documents. Then, when things started heating up with the January 6th Committee, he decided it was time to announce that he was running for office again — seemingly betting that would get the Justice Department and Federal Investigators to back off. And, if all of that were absurd enough he announced his own line of NFTs...which leads us into....

The Collapse of Cryptocurrency including FTX. Boy this wasn't the year for Cryptocurrency. There have been a number of scammers and grifters all over those markets. And, one and another, they kept blowing up and failing over and over. And all of this during one of the biggest down turns in the market. Not to mention the Instability of the Stock Market which has had major effects on the whole economy, not just the United States, but all over the world.

The Resignation of Boris Johnson who was then replaced by Liz Truss as Prime Minister, who then resigned after 45 days in office. And all of this happening during the period of the Death of Queen Elizabeth II. To say that it was a politically tumultuous summer / fall in England would be the understatement of the year.

Oh, and all of this taking place while Russia invaded Ukraine and started a War. Which, despite the loss of life and the sheer tragedy the Ukrainian people are going through, might also be seen as one of the most inspiring stories of the year. At the outset of the conflict no one believed that Ukraine could sustain a fight with Russia. But, Ukraine has proven time and time again how resilient they are. Not just holding back Russian troops, but actually getting them to withdraw from several positions. And, even providing a bit of humor at times, like when a small coastal island off the Ukraine mainland told a Russian Warship to “Go fuck yourself” over an open radio broadcast.

The End...of 2022

And that's where I am going to leave it for now. Overall it seems like 2022 wasn't all that great of a year. But there are things, like the resilience of Ukraine that should give us all hope for 2023. For me personally, I hope that I have hit a turning point with the realization that I needed to start doing something different. That I needed to get some kind of help. And, hopefully, now that all the things that kept popping up and disrupting my life are out of the way I can move forward.

Categories: #Features, #Opinion, #Editorial Tags: #2022, #mastodon, #news, #remmbrance #inmemoriam

	FediRing
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Introduction

This is the third version of this article that I have written. Actually, it isn't exactly the third version. Why? Well, the first two versions were going to be more about the latest topics and problems of the platform. That was going to be more trivial and current topic(s) focused, with a lot more room to have fun with things like Elon being butt hurt over Trent Reznor leaving the platform, or the weirdness of running a poll to decide if Former President Trump should be reinstated, only to have Trump not come back.

And certainly there is a lot of fodder there for comical takes of all sorts. In fact, if you want to keep track of them, I would recommend reading Twitter Is Going Great as they are tracking as many of the stories as possible.

Instead, I want to look at the bigger picture. There is a reality of Twitter that not a lot of people are paying attention to, and it really makes the problems that Twitter is facing even worse than anyone was led to believe. And no, it's not the bots that Elon was concerned about before he bought Twitter.

Twitter's Problem

Twitter is a failure. It was a failure long before Elon started surreptitiously buying up it's stock. It is widely known that it has almost never been a profitable company (there might be one or two years in which it was profitable, but those were fleeting moments in the history of the social media site). But even the lack of profitability isn't the basis of its failure in my belief.

Its failure comes down to three factors: (1) the size of the platform, (2) the demographics of the platform, and (3) markets / regions.

Let's talk about the size of the platform. For all appearances, Twitter has to be one of the largest platforms on the Internet, right? I mean users on the website have successfully had campaigns to do things like have Sonic The Hedgehog completely re-designed before the movie was released. They ran a campaign for literally years to get Zack Snyder's version of The Justice League released (which upon later examination has become something of a twisted story). And through one of the biggest troll pranks in the entertainment industry history, they managed to convince Sony to re-release the movie Morbius in theaters.

And television news networks have even done things like tracking sentiment on Twitter during elections, or citing “trending” tweets about specific stories. In fact the media seem to be all-on on using Twitter as both a source and reaction medium.

But this incredibly large influence in current culture is at odds with the fact that Twitter, to this day, is only the 16^th largest social media site on the Internet. The real behemoth sites in this area are Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp, TikTok. But even Pinterest, Reddit, and Snapchat are larger than Twitter.

Then there is the issue of demographics. The joke has been that Facebook is for old people, and it's 2.9 billion users are definitely a reflection of the fact that it has user base that is older. But the fact is, many of those older users were once younger users. And those younger users have stuck with the site as they have gotten older. Similar information can likely be seen for sites like YouTube, which serve content to people from all demographic groups.

Twitter, on the other hand, doesn't have nearly as broad of an appeal. The breakdown is (approximately): %28 in the 35-49 (~99M) age bracket, %27 in the 25-34 (~95M) age bracket and %25 in the 18-24 (88M) age bracket. For advertisers this is really not all that good of a breakdown. The most likely group to have disposable income is the 18-24 group, but they are the smallest of the three, representing only about a quarter of the user base. For the other groups, they are going to be more niche groups to market to, they are the groups that are likely to be moving into homes, starting familiars or focusing on their careers.

But, that's the more North American-centric advertising market. What about the other markets? Well, for Twitter, there aren't too many markets. Besides the United States, Twitter's biggest presence is in Japan. And boy howdy, that is a completely different market that I can't even begin to explain, much less understand.

Beyond these regions, Twitter barely scrapes into other regions. India, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Turkey, Indonesia are the next five biggest countries / regions. All of them have less than 20 Million users each.

So, this covers the biggest factors that are problematic for Twitter. There's an out-sized influence in some markets, there's a skew of demographics that can make it difficult for advertisers (who, surprisingly were spending as much money on Twitter as they do on YouTube), and there is the less than stellar penetration into most regions of the world.

These are obvious indicators of one of two things: either (a) stay away from this company. Investing in it is not necessarily a bad idea, but taking an ownership stake is not all that good of an idea, or (b) go through all of this information with an even finer comb, and come up with a plan that will make it into an even more appealing platform. Those are the two best options, but there seems to be another option too...

Enter Elon Musk

So, Elon Musk decided that he would try to do a hostile takeover of Twitter in early 2022. This first came to light when he was surreptitiously purchasing a lot of Twitter stock. But I am not going to go into great deal about how we got here, you can look up the whole story as it was covered in the press, and especially from several Lawyers on YouTube that went through all the court filings that occurred around the purchase.

The fact was that the whole thing was a circus, much in the way Elon tends to do a lot of things. I do think at one point he was genuinely trying to get out of the purchase, but by that point it was too late, and he had to complete the purchase in order to avoid a court battle.

So, when he entered Twitter HQ on October 26^th carrying a sink, it was largely thought that he was a person who had a plan for the company. He had been going over the financials and a lot of other information about the company for months, more information than was available to the public... So certainly he was going to take the reins and start working towards a specific vision for the company, right?

Welcome to the Real Circus

Elon's first move was not a surprise. One of the things that he had stated from the beginning was that he was going to take the company private and manage it in his way. So, firing the board and naming himself as the sole director on October 31^St was something that was inevitable. And within the next week he started firing employees...literally firing half of the employees.

Now, as much of a circus environment this created to all outward appearances, this isn't actually an unprecedented move. Firing a bunch of employees to free up capital during a takeover is something that happens quite often. However, the way this was handled was an indicator of just how poorly planned this takeover was.

Typically, in a company where mass layoffs are planned, there is a period of review. An analysis of the work of each employee, and a determination of the consequences for eliminating the employee. And, more importantly, determining how any gaps can be filled by the remaining employees. But this was obviously not how things were planned out in this case as it has been widely reported that customers that had representatives in the advertising department no longer had a contact. The communications depart for the company was completely let go – meaning that no one from the press was able to get feedback on any of their stories.

Then there were the advertisers. Upon hearing about the circus Elon had started within the company, many of the decided to pause their advertising on Twitter, And as things haven't gotten better more advertisers have pulled out. (I won't bother to repeat the lunacy of the statements Elon has made on this matter.)

Then there was the ultimate Sword of Damocles being held over the company's head when he stated publicly in an interview that it was still possible that Twitter might have to go through bankruptcy.

Overall, it just wasn't a good start to Elon's coming into the company and changing its direction and focus.

Where is Twitter Going?

Remember near the beginning of this article that I outlined the real nature of the problem that Twitter is facing: it has an out-sized influence in some countries, but an extremely low adoption throughout the rest of the world. It's demographics don't span age groups all that well. And, of course, the company has been bleeding money for years.

So, what actions has Elon taken so far:

• Cut (more) than half of the staff.
  • In the process he instituted weekly code reviews, with the possibility of employees losing their job or being put on notice.
• He instituted a paid verification plan, which immediately lead to impersonation accounts that caused real-world damage to several companies.
  • At which point he cancelled the program, stating that it would be restarted when the company had a better verification process in place. No one is certain how he is going to do that since he cut %80 of the contractors that did this type of work.
• He re-instated several highly controversial accounts, and then a few days later offered “general amnesty” to other accounts that had been previously banned, but hadn't “broken the law”.
• Disabled %80 of the microservices used in the back end of the system.
  • Numerous issues have been reported since then, but details of which issues are specifically related to this event are unknown.
• Made several other proclamations... But we'll talk about those below.

Out of these five actions, only one of them can be directly seen as addressing any of these problems: paid verification. But, there were issues with that beyond the fact that it blew up in the company's face. Estimates have been made as to how much money the new verification system was likely to make. If all the 400K currently verified users signed up for new verification mark, Twitter would have only made around $38 Million (according to The Verge). And that doesn't account for the overhead of handling the verification in the first, which would significantly reduce the profit. And it wouldn't come anywhere near making a dent in the $1 Billion in interest payments Twitter owes yearly.

Note that the one thing that none of these actions did that could have been a major positive: do something to prove to advertisers that Twitter was still a stable platform. If anything, these actions proved just the opposite. Companies don't want to advertise on a platform where there is no one to contact regarding their plans. They don't want to advertise someplace where sudden changes in the code / infrastructure could disrupt or affect their ads. And they really don't want to advertise on a platform where they may be associated with people that are known for things like antisemitism, racism, sexism, misogyny, or worse.

While I did say that reducing the staff is a cost-cutting measure, it's not significant enough to offset any of the debt either. By my personal estimate, it was likely around $250M. But that doesn't add any profit and give the company any funds to work with. It just slows the rate of spending. But in the meantime, it has done far greater damage to the company as many of the people who have the long-term institutional knowledge are no longer around to help with the transition plans that Elon may have, if any.

That would bring us to the last item on the list: the proclamations. So, let's talk about them...

Okay... What's The Actual Plan?

So there have been several proclamations that Elon has made in regard to his plans to create “Twitter 2.0” which he has dubbed “The Everything App”. This is a throwback to his X.com days — an application which largely failed, and was bought out by the company that would eventually become PayPal. Let's go through Elon's current plans one at a time.

Verification / Blue

Yup, this plan isn't gone yet, the first failure was just a bump in the road, as far as Elon was concerned. In fact, if anything, he has started to double down on this plan. He wasn't to have multiple badges to indicate people who are celebrities, politicians, or company reps. And, on top of this he plans to add labels to the profiles to clarify why the user has this type of badge. IE, someone is an actor, musician, model, journalists, media, etc.

The problem with this system is that (a) doing true verification of each person that applies is going to require that they provide personal information, and won't have any knowledge of how that information is being handled, and (b) the cost of doing such verification is likely to be equal to, or greater than the original $8 USD.

But, that's just the surface of the issues with this concept. The real problem is what it will do to the culture that Twitter has had over the past decade. By introducing this system Elon is indicating that the users of Twitter are now being split into castes. And those castes will have different treatment. Some of the castes will show up on the verified tab of the site. And these castes will be given priority in timelines and search results.

This will devalue the users that are unable to go through such a verification. For example, users that are whistleblowing on corruption within a corporation. Or activists that are working to expose corruption, abuse, or other issues within their government. Or how about the people that are part of the LGBTQ+ movement that are in vulnerable positions and cannot go through verification without fear of being doxxed?

Encrypted Direct Messages

On the surface this sounds like a great idea. However, this is something that the company has been trying to do for years. The problem they have run into is that the systems they have looked at have had the requirement of using personally identifiable information for generating the keys necessary to encrypt the messages.

But other applications do it, right? Yes they do, but they are often either using weak encryption, or they have been built from the ground up to handle this kind of information in a way that is less vulnerable than a system like Twitter. Maybe it can be done, maybe it can't. I personally don't think that with Twitter's security breach track record it would be a good idea to trust them. (It's only recently come to light that a security breach a few years ago was much larger than was originally reported.)

Some other considerations: the US only allows fairly weak encryption technologies to be exported to other countries. This means that either (a) there will be two different types of encryption, one for use within then US, and another for user with other countries, or (b) that only weak encryption will be used.

And a final point, even if this is implemented, don't believe for a second that there won't be government organizations that insist they be able to get access to unencrypted copies of the information from direct messages. It is not very likely that the messages will truly be end-to-end encrypted.

And, I suspect that this will be tied into the verification service, and will likely be an additional charge along with the verification. I don't have any specific knowledge of this, but it's just a hunch. And if that's the case, it will be totally useless for the cases in which it is most needed (as mentioned above with the verification system).

Long Form Tweets

Whatever this is. The question is why? This doesn't actually serve any real purpose that I can think of. Twitter has always prized itself on being the short content system. It's the place to have higher interaction between users. The short content has driven the concept that the information is discrete and specific. Each tweet is designed with some thought to get an exact point across.

Now, I can say that expanding the limit to something like 500 characters, like Mastodon, would not be a bad idea. This would allow people to be a bit more precise with getting their points across, without forcing users to condense things in a manner that is easily misunderstood.

The one screenshot we've seen of this concept so far showed a news article in “long form”. But that doesn't seem to be a likely candidate for the use of long form tweets, IMO. News organizations have been pretty vocal about using these systems to drive traffic to their websites where they can try to recover at least some of their operating costs through advertising or selling subscriptions to their publications. They have already gone through battles with both Facebook and Google over the idea of having their content syndicated in the past. They are pretty entrenched in their ways, and this isn't likely to change any time soon.

Advertising as “Entertainment”

I think this is meant to be just another name for in-line advertising. The idea that the ads look like the tweets that you are already reading. Of course there are problems with this... First is the obvious one: this is how Twitter's advertising works for the most part already.

Second is that there are regulations around how ads can be presented in many countries. Japan seems to have some of the most creative advertising, but that is largely based on their social and cultural norms. Those norms are different from the rest of the world where most people find ads of any form to mostly be annoying.

I personally don't see this going anywhere. I suspect it's just a bone he put out there to try to get many of the big corporations that pulled out of advertising on Twitter to come back.

Video

This is already part of Twitter. People upload short videos to the site already. Longer form videos aren't likely going to work with Twitter. Besides, there is plenty of competition in the video space now: YouTube, Lbry, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and others.

The other thing about this is that Twitter has a track record in this area. They had Vine, a predecessor to TikTok that was largely loved before it was retracted. But now, between YouTube and TikTok paying creators to make content for their platforms there isn't much of a space for Twitter to come in.

Payments

If you weren't convinced when I said that Elon was trying to go back to his X.com days before, this should settle the matter. The idea that Elon has stated is that he wants people to be able to transfer money and cryptocurrency between each other.

First question: hasn't Elon learned from the very short-lived Bitcoin experiment that he did with Tesla in 2021? In February 2021 he purchased $1.5 Billion in bitcoin, but in May of that year stopped accepting the coin citing the damage that it was doing to the environment. Honestly the only thing that has changed since then is that there are more scams in the Cryptocurrency market being exposed on a daily basis, we've seen whole companies and exchanges collapse (here's looking to the latest, FTX), and the cryptocurrency market is more unstable than ever.

Also, Musk has been sued over manipulating the Cryptocurrency market in the past.

Second: does Elon even understand the kind of regulation that getting into the money transfer business is going to entail? When he was originally working on X.com, the internet was the wild west. The regulators weren't ready for the rise of a site like PayPal, but they learned quickly. And now the whole system is at least as regulated as the banking system, if not more.

If Elon doesn't like deal with the FTC and SEC now, imagine how much more complicated things are going to be getting into this business.

Video / Audio Chat

Something else that Elon floated on Twitter, but wasn't in his recent slide presentation was having Audio and/or Video direct messages. This actually seems like something that wouldn't be a bad idea. It's currently possible to post voice-memos, or videos as regular tweets. And there are Twitter Spaces for group voice chats. Extending these abilities to the Direct Messaging portion of Twitter, especially if they are encrypted as is planned for Direct Messages already.

However, this wouldn't be much of an innovation overall. Other social sites like Facebook and Snapchat have had these kinds of features for some time. On the other hand, there is space to innovate in this area, but the way this was thrown out there as an off-hand remark leads me to believe that Elon hasn't considered that possibility.

Reconciling The Problems vs. The Proposals

That's it for all the known and speculated plans. But now comes the point at which things need to be reconciled. If we take these plans, and look at the current issues that Twitter is facing, which (if any) of these plans could actually dig them out of running in the red? Do any of these help to actually bring twitter to a place where there is a bigger acceptance of it in the markets? How do these plans address the issue of demographics?

Markets / Regions

Let's start with market penetration. None of these features will have an effect on market penetration. In fact, just adding features to Twitter is the wrong approach in this area. In fact, Elon seems to be under the impression that Twitter is just about “software and servers”. And in that he is completely missing what Twitter is about: it's a communications platform that supposedly brings communities together.

And, in fact, Elon has even said as much: he's said that Twitter is the town square. And that he wanted “free speech” (under his definition of free speech) to be the main point of Twitter. However, these plans don't make one feel that this the case.

There was one thing that he has done that might go towards this goal... He claimed that disabling %80 of the microservices would make the app faster in many regions. That claim hasn't been verified or dis-proven. However, by itself, performance improvements does not equate to increased acceptance. There are a lot of other factors that affect application acceptance.

For example, local governments may have requirements for applications in some regions. This is something that has been documented in the dealings of Facebook and Google. Often the requirements of some countries runs very counter to the goal of allowing freedom of speech. And it can actually increase the amount resources needed for things like security and moderation — both of which Elon seems to have done a great job of cutting.

Demographics

Demographics are important in a network like Twitter. The demographics need to support a couple of objectives: provide monetizable traffic (which Twitter refers to as mDAU's – monetizable Daily Active Users), and users who are willing and able to actively spend money on products / services. While Twitter captures a large portion of the demographics in the ages 18-49, they are missing the final group: users over 50.

Currently, Twitter's mDAU numbers are low compared to other social media sites like Facebook and YouTube. The problem is, it isn't likely that they are actually going to increase their mDAU numbers without becoming more of a presence in other regions / markets. The other thing that would help would be to increase the mDAU through bringing in more 50+ year old users, which doesn't appear to be reflected in any of the announced plans.

The one plan that could directly appeal to advertisers is his “Advertising as Entertainment”. However, this doesn't sound like it's a plan for advertisers. Instead, it sounds like it's a plan to attempt to keep Twitter's user based from being annoyed with increased ad traffic. I don't see how this is going to work. Sure advertising during the Super Bowl is seen by many as entertainment, but that is a special event, and advertisers spend massive amounts of money creating those advertisements to stand out in a very crowded field. This isn't the kind of thing they are going to do specifically for Twitter...if they even want to advertise on Twitter anymore.

When we consider that approximately half of the advertisers have left Twitter due to the instability that has ensued since Elon has taken over, it's difficult to see how this source of funding will be recovered. My suspicion is that advertisers will find their funding is better used on other sites that have a larger demographic that is monetizable.

Outsized Influence

Twitter has, in the past, found itself in the unique position of being very influential. Or, at least, it appears to be influential... Until you look closer. Yes, there have been things like the “Release the Snyder Cut” campaign for the Justice League movie, and reaction to the backlash for the design of Sonic The Hedgehog that caused the studio to delay the film's release so they could redesign the character and re-composite the film.

But, those cases are outliers, as discovered by Matthew Patrick in his Film Theory video “Twitter's Toxic Relationship With Movies”. The fact is that Twitter often gets things wrong, or completely ignores things in some cases. Why? This goes back to the demographics. The movies that appeal to a broad audience aren't often advertised or even talked about on Twitter, like the upcoming Avatar 2. And in the case of the most popular TV show in the United States, it doesn't even get mentioned much less trend on Twitter. Why? Its main demographic is people in the 50+ range.

The other place that Twitter has traditionally had a major influence is in the news media. Many journalists have used Twitter as a starting place for finding new stories to report on. And many publications and news networks have sourced material from Twitter. Heck, at one point some of the news networks were using Twitter as a form of real-time polling for elections, or as a Q&A system for live broadcasts during the pandemic.

But a lot of that is changing now. We've already seen CBS news enact a temporary suspension of their activity on Twitter in order to re-evaluate their relationship with the platform. (The did return a few days later, however this was the first time that any news network made a formal, public announcement that they were reconsidering their relationship with a platform.)

And, in the wake of Elon's takeover thousands of journalists have left the platform. Many of them moved to other platforms like Mastodon and Post News.

And Elon's proposal that would address this? Long Form Tweets. In the mockup for this feature it features what appears to be a news story from a publication. The problem with this is that it is exactly the opposite of what the majority of the media wants. They want to drive readers to their sites in order to either (a) sell a subscription, or (b) build up their own mDAU numbers for advertisers. As mentioned above, many media organizations already went through these battles with Facebook and Google. Twitter doesn't have that much influence. And, even if Twitter managed to find a way to leverage that kind of influence, it still isn't likely to solve the other issues that Twitter is facing (market penetration, and demographics issues).

Conclusion

So, that's the state of things. The situation as I can judge it is not looking very good for Twitter, and that's before digging into things like the technical issues (Chris Titus's video “Will Twitter Infrastructure Go Down?” is very informative on this topic), the implications of his unbanning literally thousands of accounts, and numerous other public decisions that he's been posting. The current needs that Twitter has are not going to be addressed by the features that Elon has put forward.

Honestly, I think there are things that he should focus on:

• Fixing and solidifying the infrastructure. There's a lot of work that needs to be done there, and it's likely to be a long term project to do the cleanup (my guesstimate is that with enough top-tier engineers this will take around a year to accomplish).
• Cancel the idea of Blue Verification. It's a bad plan that is likely to do a lot of damage to the social aspects of Twitter.
• Take the ideas for new features and work on directly monetizing them as “value added” extensions. This would be similar to Discord's Nitro subscriptions which add new features to the server.
  • Maybe have two different or three different groups of packages for: general users, organizations, and businesses.
  • General users might add things like threaded tweets and custom emojis for reactions.
  • Organizations might add things like general users package, plus group accounts that are only visible to users added to an access list for that account, and expanded Twitter spaces...maybe even video group calls.
  • Business users like the Org users, but with some other additional features.
• Some other features could be general add-ons that aren't targeted at organizations, like voice and video chatting in DM's.
• Another thing that might be a possible add-on would be publication subscriptions. IE, work with a bunch of the media to make their content available via special accounts on Twitter, but only users that pay can view the account. The subscription would, of course, include a cut for Twitter.

These are just a few of the ideas that come to my mind. They are things that I would investigate, take some time to do some research on. I suspect some of them might not be worth doing, but some of them would have a good chance of generating some real income,

	FediRing
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Introduction

I think there is (potentially) only one person that is surprised at the contents of the leaked decision of the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v Wade, and that would be Susan Collins, who has proven yet again that she is a short-sighted, and quite a gullible person. Not the kind of representation that any State should want in the Federal Government.

The fact of this matter is that Roe v Wade is settled law, and has been established as the law of the land for 50+ years at this point. That is literally almost as long as my whole lifetime. I cannot, honestly, imagine a time when women didn't have the right to determine their own health decisions. I think it shouldn't matter if it's how a woman wants to treat a common cold, pregnancy, or some type of autoimmune disease. The fact is that a woman has every right to determine the course of their health care as much as any other person does.

But I want to focus on some issues that this leak should be bringing to the foreground again that are not being discussed.

Impeachment

There has never been a Supreme Court Justice that has been impeached and removed from the court. In 1804 Justice Samuel Chase was impeached by the House of Representatives, but acquitted by the Senate in 1805. Abe Fortas resigned from the court in 1965 under the threat of impeachment due to financial improprieties. That says a lot about the stability of the court, but it also says that we have made Supreme Court Justices nearly unimpeachable. I believe it is time for that standard to change. No one should have a lifetime appointment to an unelected seat without the understanding that their past and present conduct will be routinely and regularly reviewed to maintain their suitability for the position.

The fact of the matter is, we have one Justice that is currently sitting on the bench that doesn't, in my belief, hold to standards that we should have and maintain for the court. And that Justice is Brett Kavanaugh. Those who watched the confirmation hearings will remember that he was credibly accused of sexual assault, possibly going as far as committing rape, during the hearing. There was a short investigation by the FBI, which found that the allegations were credible. And yet, the Republican controlled committee still seated Mr. Kavanaugh.

This was an egregious offense to the American People, and all women in America. It is time to re-open the investigation into Mr. Kavanaugh's history, and determine if there are further grounds for an impeachment proceeding. It's my belief that with a full investigation conducted by the FBI, there would be major grounds to seek the impeachment of Mr. Kavanaugh.

Illegitimately Seated

Mitch McConnell manipulated the Supreme Court nomination process in 2016 to block the confirmation of Merrick Garland under the Obama Administration. By successfully manipulating the process, Neil Gorsuch was nominated and seated under President Trump instead. This is a situation should be reversed.

In addition, we know that the Mitch McConnell has been manipulating the Federal Justice nomination process for years. He has been working hard to stuff the courts with conservative justices, a move that in many respects is setting back to the progress of the justice systems by decades. Mitch McConnell should be sanctioned and or impeached for taking actions that should rise to the level of breaking the process. In fact, I believe, that there should be the establishment of a new set of rules that make such manipulations of the process illegal.

Neil Gorsuch should similarly be brought to resign from the court, or possibly find that the illegitimate grounds under which he was nominated and confirmed could result in impeachment as well.

Supreme Court Structure

While the Supreme Court has functioned reasonably over the past two hundred years, it is becoming more and more apparent that it no longer functions in a manner that is in keeping with the will and consensus of the American people. This is an issue that needs to be addressed, as it currently is not in keeping with the standards and norms being established by our elected representatives.

The most obvious thought has been to impose term limits on the Justices. By doing this we would ensure that there are different people with different thought processes brought into the court on a regular basis. Another possibility would be to have an enforced retirement. This would have a similar effect to term limits, in that as a Justice gets older they are more likely to become set in the ideas and concepts that they learned much earlier in their lives. However, as society changes many of those ideas become outdated. (And, this is one of the things that is coming out with the leak of the decision that would affect Roe v Wade: many of the arguments are well documented, old and have been largely rejected before.)

Another thought would be to have the American people elect the Justices that sit on the Supreme Court. The Judicial system is the only part of the Government where the seats are largely appointed instead of elected. This takes a large portion of the American people's self-governance out of their hands. Maybe it is time to reconsider that concept and put it back into our hands.

The last idea that has come to mind has been to change the structure of the Supreme Court, possibly expand it with more sitting Justices that could (potentially) better reflect the American People. I honestly have the least hope in this idea without some other fundamental changes as mentioned above. While the current Supreme Court has changed to reflect the American people to some degree, it isn't enough to really reflect the make up of the country. And, as long as the nomination process can be manipulated to keep it this way it will not be successful in reflecting the country as a whole.

Conclusion

So, these are my thoughts about the current situation. It's time to start taking action. Mitch McConnell needs to feel the repercussions for his past actions, and there needs to be changes to stop him, or someone else in the future, from manipulating the nomination process again. Brett Kavanaugh should be fully investigated and impeached based on the findings of the investigation. Neil Gorsuch should either consider resigning after the actions taken against Mitch McConnell, or he should be fully vetted and investigated.

The Supreme Court itself is no longer in keeping with the American people. Lifetime appointments are not appropriate for these seats as they need to reflect the changes to society that are occurring on a daily basis. Whether term limits are established, or forced retirement is enacted is the first step in making changes, however if the nomination process isn't fixed it isn't likely to have the effect that is needed to establish a court that is both stable and in keeping with the American people.

Electing the Supreme Court Justices would put the power of self-governance back in the hands of the people. Routine review of the Justices could be a powerful too to ensure that there isn't undue influence being wielded over the court that isn't in keeping with the American people's will.

If I recall correctly, there was a study with recommendations that had been given to President Biden when he first came into The Office of the President. When asked about it, I believe he said he was taking it under advisement. Most of us knew that meant he wasn't going to take action on it. Now, however, I believe it is time to revisit these studies and determine what should be done to fix the Supreme Court moving forward.

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Category: #Editorial Tags: #abortion #impeachment #nominations #retirement #supremecourt #termlimits

	FediRing
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Originally Published: 2022-043-30

Introduction

Welcome to the start of the new Unattributed website. If by some chance you had stumbled on this website in the past, you might know that it used to be a Tumblr blog. At that time the idea was to share interesting things I found around the web, along with a few of my personal creations. Basically it was a large open bookmark compilation.

Now, however, it's time to move on. The reason for moving on to something else has come about for several reasons:

• I'm feeling more inspired by the myriad of random information around me.
• My approach to the internet and more specifically social media, has changed.
• It was time to revive my websites after several years of hibernation.
• I needed / wanted to consolidate my sites.

So, let's take the time to explain all of this for the rest of this article.

Getting Inspired

Over the past two years I've spent a lot of time doing two things: consuming a lot of media, and writing. This came about for a couple of reasons: the first was my task of taking care of a terminally ill relative, and was followed by the pandemic. But those weren't the only reasons. There were also issues like nearly all of my technology dying within two months (literally my desktop computer, laptop and cell phone), just when a lot of technology became very difficult (or very expensive) to get a hold of. And then there was the 8–9 months spent dealing with the estate of the relative I had been taking care of. Overall, you could say that 2020 wasn't all that great (or productive) of a year for me.

However, I did get to do a fair amount of thinking, planning, writing. This was something that I hadn't really done for quite some time since most of my plans had to center around other things in my life. It wasn't really mine to direct.

The thing that was a real changing point for me, however, came when I was able to start getting some technology together again and started actually working on this. The big things were: (a) I organized a lot of information that had been spread all over the place, (b) I started working on how to put together a work flow for myself, and © I started actually gaming.

Now, gaming might not seem like a big deal. But for me, well, I generally hadn't been much of a gamer before. And I'm still only into lighter games: turn based RPG's, visual novels, simulations, etc. But the thing is this: for me, it served as something on an inspiration, how? It's given me a chance to experience narratives differently. I've long known that games have their own way of presenting narratives. One of the things that I had started consuming quite a bit over the past several years was gaming content on YouTube (in particular Minecraft content, which is now my favorite game).

So, basically, I found that I have more inspiration now: I have a new perspective on things, I have a ton of materials that I've built over an extended period of time (my email archives are around ~2500 messages per year over the last 10 years, my “knowledge” database has over 1000 documents, and I have a bibliography database with hundreds of references in it), and I have a desire to explore a bunch of different concepts and topics in as many forms as I possibly can.

The Internet and Social Media

Partially because of the responsibility to take are of my relative, partially due to limited access to the internet, and partially doe to the failure of most of the surrounding technology, I ended up leaving the internet for a couple of years. More specifically, leaving social media. And I don't regret it. I've come to realize that the time spent doom-scrolling on Twitter, trying to checking things out on Instagram or TikTok, and playing attention games that social media pushes are quite damaging.

The thing is, I've realized that I tend to not function all that well in the social media landscape. The idea that one is trying to come up with short pieces of information that will grab and sustain the attention of thousands or millions of people is just a game I don't do very well. Instead, I function in the world where there is more deliberate and considered thought given to things, or there is a bigger narrative. Consider my approach to be a novel to social media's micro-fiction.

That being said I have found there are some platforms that I tend to like using a bit more: typically these are forums. Forums tend to work better for my because they are specialized in a specific topic, and most of the expression can be more complete than trying to cram something into 250 characters. But as with all things, having something like Twitter is useful at times for more interactive communication: Mastodon is filling that role now. Reddit is also okay to some degree, depending on which Subreddits you are in. PixelFed is a suitable Instagram replacement, not a lot of people posting fancy (fake) influencer shots, just people sharing their pictures / drawings / etc.

The point is: I don't use the social media the way I was before. Now I tend to focus on the things that I want to do, and occasionally pop my head onto a social platform when I want / need to. That's led me to be much more relaxed than I used to be.

Out of Hibernation

This is where things get a bit on the geeky side.

Once I knew that I wanted to start working on my websites again I had to make some decisions. There were some things that needed to be addressed:

• I wasn't happy with the software I was using.
• I wasn't pleased with one of my hosting services.
• I needed to move off the free hosting that I was using for some of the sites.
• I needed to simplify some aspects of managing all my sites.
• I needed to drop a service(s) that I don't trust.
• And finally: I needed to re-design things into a workflow that I could work with.

There's a lot more technical details that go into this. I spent quite a bit of time evaluating options before I finally came to a decision. And things actually didn't go quite the way that I expected:

For example: the software. That was actually a sticking point with me. I wanted to get off the software that I was using due to changes making it more difficult to use. And I still feel that way. But there were other things to consider: I've been using this software for nearly a decade at this point. Some more recent changes are actually positive (but they don't undo the negative changes). Looking at other options, I didn't find one that I felt I would be comfortable with (and I went so far as to set up local instances of them and tried porting one of my sites to them — so I put in some time doing serious testing).

The hosting situation was probably the more annoying issue. The host I've been with now for 10 years. I didn't want to hit that milestone. I actually started shutting down services with them several years back, but hadn't finished. So now it was time to start doing research all over again. Fortunately I found a service that can host all my sites, and should cost around as much as it previously cost to host one site. This new hosting service also simplifies a lot of management side of things, and has features that my old hosting hadn't figured out how to do in 10 years (like having staging areas for working on updates).

Services being dropped: I'll be blunt about this one, it's Google. There are just more and more things happening around them that make them a potential liability. A couple of quick examples: Google Analytics is not compliant with recent EU directives, and there is potential liability in using Google Fonts API's. This isn't a matter that I take lightly. I personally haven't been a huge fan of Google for a while now, I don't use their search engine, I try to turn off as much of their stuff on my phone and tablet as possible, and I've been trying to get rid of their analytics everywhere. Also, I've been moving all of my domains to a different registrar (previously some of my domains had been registered with Google out of convenience). So yeah, that's actually a pretty big one.

The thing that I haven't folded into this yet: my approach to social media and the internet. One of the things that I decided when I left social media was to not try to chase things around anymore. I want to focus on my work and not on trying to chase status online. And yet, I still want to get these sites seen by an appropriate audience. Well, it turns out that the Fediverse (which Mastodon is part of) has an answer: they have a publication protocol that can be integrated into these sites...when an article is published the Fediverse will get a copy of it, and it will just look like another Mastodon / Friendica / etc. stream that people can follow.

So that makes a lot of things a lot more streamlined. Sure, I probably won't have “the reach” that other sites have, or that I had in the past. But honestly, that doesn't make a difference, I know that the people that are interested in my work will find it and be able to follow it in a way that is convenient to them.

Conclusion

So, yeah, this was a long way of saying a lot and a little at the same time. Basically, I've given a long explanation of how I have gotten here. What this new beginning is and how it came about. The thing that I am most pleased with is that I have an idea of the things that I want to do. I've found my inspiration again, and I have a lot of ideas that I want to pursue. This site is my opportunity to talk about the things I am pursuing, and present some of the research and information I'm learning along the way.

I'm also happy to have found a way to streamline a lot of these endeavors. Between having a hosting service that helps to pull things together, to finding tools to publish these articles to the Fediverse, there is a lot of time that I can spend working on the articles ant to write, the research that I want to do and dive headlong into any random rabbit holes that I want to.

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Categories: #Technology #Features Tags: #celebration #inspiration #revival #socialmedia

	FediRing
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Introduction

In 2015, I wrote a series of reviews on the best ear buds under $25 and $50 on The CerebralRift. The winners out of the whole series were a pair of Symphonized earbuds that are no longer available, and the SoundMAGIC E10's. These were truly, for the price and the time, some of the best earbuds that I could find. However, one of the failed after a couple of years of use, and the other I lost a couple of years ago. So, I had to replace them.

But, things change. The prices on these products have all gone up (even if only slightly), and my usage has changed: I'm much more interested in home use these days, and while I still prefer cabled earbuds, the value in wireless earbuds hasn't escaped me.

So, this isn't a review, exactly. Instead, I'm just going to document my recent journey in regard to finding some audio products that I feel are worthwhile. Buckle up, there's close to a dozen products that we'll cover in this list over the next several weeks. This week we're just going to focus on the headphones.

Headphones

This is the easiest of the items to start with. I didn't have to do a lot of research, and I knew that what I was getting was going to be excellent. Why? Because I bought headphones that fit into two categories: (a) extremely well reviewed headphones, and (b) headphones that are considered iconic in audio circles.

There's also something else to be said about these: I wasn't paying super close attention to the price tag. Why? Large headphones are home use products to me these days. In the past I carried a set of Bose Tri-Port headphones with me. But the problem with them was they kept breaking in ways that couldn't be fixed easily (part of the headband mount for the ear cups kept breaking which I could only repair by sending them back to Bose, which I never investigated doing). So, as I mentioned in my original article, that was one of the reasons I went to inexpensive wired earbuds in the first place: I was tired of spending $100-$120 each time I needed to replace a pair of Bose headphones.

But, just because I wasn't paying attention to the price tag in the way I would have in the past, that doesn't mean I just went out and spent frivolously. $500 or $1000 is a ridiculous amount of money for a pair of headphones, IMO. But keeping to $100 for a set of headphones doesn't mean you will get the best bang-for-the-buck either.

The other thing is: sometimes being iconic matters as much or more than sound quality. What? Is this the Unattributed you know? Where did he go? Let me explain.... The sound signature of an audio component is a personal choice. This has always been true. And, while I tend to favor accuracy in sound, sometimes you want to listen to music in a way that is more comfortable to your ears, instead of listening with something that is analytical and perfectly correct. I've known this for decades, it's just that I've favored accuracy most of the time.

I can give an example: there were a pair of loudspeakers (in fact I think it was the whole line from one company) that I really liked. I visited an audio store multiple times with different audio recordings to throw at them, and time after time they continued to impress me. The clarity, the detail, the imaging was all amazing. However, the sound signature was not what you'd expect. The bass was clear and consistent, the mid-range was warm and flat, the top end actually had a signal roll-off. And to my ears they were amazingly comfortable to listen to, even if I couldn't afford them (IIRC, the price as around the price was around $800/pair). So, instead I found speakers that I could afford that weren't nearly as great sounding, but they weren't going to break my bank account.

So, while I've always favored accuracy in reproduction, I also understand the value in having a sound signature that fits how you want to listen to the music. And sometimes the accuracy of something doesn't need to be perfect in order for it to be enjoyable. But, this doesn't mean I'll accept just anything: fuck Beats – they still sound like shit. Same with Raycon. Those two brands scream, “I care about fashion” and bullshit lifestyle branding instead of a good product.

With that understanding in mind let's talk about a couple of pairs of headphones.

Grado SR80x

Yeah, this is what I meant when I said 'sometimes' the sound signature is more important than the accuracy of the sound. This is also the case where the brand is so iconic that it's well known in audio circles, and the company has a reputation solely based on their products and service. If you look at the RTings review for the SR80e (the SR80x is an update to the SR80e) you can see they found the SR80e has an overall neutral sound. But when you dig into the graphs another story emerges.

These headphones have a bass roll-off, basically from the mid-bass down the signal response gets lower and lower. These days we see the opposite in most headphones: the bass, especially in this frequency range, is boosted. This often leads to muddiness and pulsating / throbbing sounds that, IMO, are annoying. Basically bass that has a bit of boost or is flat may be better, IMO. But sometimes having the roll-off characteristic is welcome.

The mid-range is basically flat, except for one small bump in the lower mid-range that is likely to go unnoticed. The treble is where things get interesting with several spikes in the lower and mid-treble range, while the upper treble rolls (not the best word for it given the chart) off. This just gives these headphones a light and bright sound, with a solid mid-range.

The thing I think most people would find surprising about these headphones is that there is still a well-defined bass sound. I said above that you expect “pulsating / throbbing” sounds from headphones that have boosted bass. However, you still get that from these headphones, just not at the level that you feel like your head is going to split open.

There are a couple of characteristics of these headphones that are worth noting. First, they are open back headphones. What does that mean? It means the wall behind the driver, the one that is on the outside of the headphone is not closed. This allows to the sound to feel more open and natural, but it also means that others around you can hear what you are listening (IE, the sound leaks). The nice thing about this is that there is a lot of room to breath in them: air can move between your head and the ear pads. If you've ever started sweating while wearing headphones, you'll know how annoying it can be. For me personally, this has allowed me to listen using the headphones for literally hours on end. Something that is pretty rare for me, and is also partially explained by the other characteristic worth mentioning.

That characteristic is that these are on-ear headphones, and that puts them in a class that is less seen in this class of headphone. These headphones are design to sit on your ears, and don't have cups that fit over your ears. This is one of the reasons that there is more room to breath: there is more space for air to get to your ears and help keep you cool. This does have the side effect of not providing any sound isolation, so these aren't headphones that you want to use outside, on the street, in crowded places, or anywhere there is a lot of noise that could detract from your listening. Personally, that's not an issue I'm concerned with since, as I said in the beginning, I don't consider these for travel, These headphones are for home use where I can control the environment.

Sennheiser HD600

If you've known me for a long time, you probably know that I like Sennheiser headphones, well at least the ones designed for a more premium audio experience. The fact is, I had wanted to buy Sennheiser headphones for years. The HD600 came out in 1997, and I knew of them in the early 2000s, but at that time I didn't have the budget for them. But now that I could afford them, they had to be part of my collection. Why? Consider that they are often considered reference headphones by many in the audio world because of the flat, detailed sound, excellent sound stage and just overall quality. Don't believe me, just check the RTings.com review of the HD600's. (Note: the photo above is of the HD650 headphones since it was the only one I could find under a Creative Commons license.)

This does mark one of the bigger trends for me in terms of audio. I tend to like a “neutral sound”. That is, I tend towards a sound that is more flat, and less “V shaped” (V shaped sound is characterized by boosted bass and treble). I think the reason for this is that the “boosted bass” style of headphones just sounds too unnatural to me, which ends up distracting from the rest of the music.

How do these compare to the Grados? There is less bass roll-off, and the treble is not quite as bright. The sound stage is larger, the imaging is nicer. Basically anything that I liked about the Grado headphones is present and improved in the HD600. Of course, you probably should expect that given that the HD600 costs 3x as much as the SR80x.

There are a few qualities that are quite different between the Grado and Sennheiser headphones that are worth talking about. The first is that these are over ear style, instead of on ear style. As I mentioned above one of the advantages of the Grado headphones is that they don't put a lot of force on your head (~0.8lbs of pressure). The Sennheiser headphones use about double the pressure (1.5lbs of pressure). This has the disadvantage for me of pushing the temple of my glasses against my head. It's not too bad overall, but sometimes it contributes to me wanting to take the headphones off sooner.

The second big difference is in the cables. The Sennheiser's take the win in this area — mostly. The cables on the HD600 is long: 3 meters (9ft, 10in), whereas the SR80x is 1.8 meters (6ft). The Sennheiser's have a thinner, more flexible rubber shielded cable. The Grados have a cloth covered, thick cable that isn't as flexible but is also far less prone to twisting and kinking. But all of that doesn't really matter, they both work well, don't have transference issues and sound good. Where the Sennheiser wins is that the cables are detachable. The cable is plugged into little sockets in the bottom of each driver enclosure. This is convenient in several ways: want to get a shorter cable? Need a longer cable? Need to replace a broken cable? Need a cable for a 2.5mm jack instead of the standard 3.5mm jack? Just look them up, and order them. No need to do any extra work with these headphones, it's all just a quick swap that will take less than 5 minutes.

The last item worth mentioning is (a) quite technical, and (b) debate-able. The issue at hand is impedance or resistance. The resistance is the property that determines how much power is needed to energize the drivers in the headset. Now this can be important in some cases, however most of the time it isn't that big of a consideration. However, some people swear that if a pair of headphones has a high resistance, then an amplifier is needed to drive them properly. However, there are others, such as Crinacle (a highly prolific IEM and Headphone reviewer) that say that you typically don't need a specialized DAC and headphone amplifier to drive most headphones, just a simple dongle style DAC is enough.

So, why did I bring this up, especially if it doesn't matter? Well, the impedance of the SR80x is 38Ω, while the HD600 is 300Ω. Yes, the Sennheiser resistance is nearly 8 times that of the Grado headphones. That's just too big of a difference to ignore. However, I did try using the HD600s with a simple USB-C DAC dongle on my phone, and they seemed to work fine. Then I tried it with my Fiio BTR5 DAC (Bluetooth wireless DAC that can output more power), and the HD600s sounded better to me than they did with the USB-C DAC. But that's all very subjective, and really outside my use case since I'm only using these headphones at home and not taking them on trips.

That Big Ol' Elephant

I'm sure the above reviews are going to be controversial. How can I give a 79% to the Sennheiser's, and 86% to the Grados? Well, the fact is that if I were only judging this based on the Sound Quality, the Sennheiser's would absolutely be the winner. I feel comfortable saying that the HD600's achieve a 91 out of 100 score, while the SR80x's achieve 85 out of 100. Seriously if you haven't listened to this generation of the Grados, you should. They are surprisingly good. And, if you compare the charts on RTings, you will notice more similarities than differences.

The build quality of both of these headphones is fairly equal. I know there are headphones that are built better: better, exotic materials, more interesting design language, etc. However, I don't feel like headphones need to be fashion statements. So, as long as the build quality isn't cheap, seems like it will last a long time, and doesn't interfere with the sound quality, I can only give them a good score.

So, that brings us to Price and Value, also known as: The Big Fat Elephant In The Room.

The Grados cost $125US, while the Sennheiser's are $400US. That makes the Sennheiser's 3.2 times more expensive than the Grados. So, the big difference between the HD600 and SR80x comes down to the value of the drivers and tuning. Given that the component differences are significant, can you say that the price difference is justified? Or, to put it another way: does the improvement in sound quality that the components and tuning bring to the HD600 justify the price difference? And, if it doesn't then what would have been appropriate.

Honestly, I'm still going back and forth on this a bit. But, I think I've settled on an answer: and that is no, the HD600 does not offer 3.2x the sound improvement over the SR80x. They do, however sound about somewhere between 1.5-2x of the SR80x. That means the price point for the HD600 should be about 2x the price of the Grados, or $250. Given that the price of the components is also a factor, then I would consider $250-$300 to be on target. And that's how the ratings end up with the Sennheiser's being lower than the Grados.

Something To Note

If you hadn't realized it already, I've focused this review mostly on the sound quality of the headphones. I haven't stated that I am looking for anything other than sound from them. I don't care about isolation, noise cancellation, sound leakage, or other DSP (digital signal processing) types of features that you find on modern headphones. What I do care about is that the sound that is coming out of my computer, cell phone, tablet, stereo or what ever I use for my music to be as cleanly relayed to my ears as possible.

There are times when you want these other DSP features in your listening device. However, I find that for me those features aren't useful in 90 percent of my use case. For example, if I want to play a game, I'm generally not wearing headphones, instead I'll use desktop speakers with the DSP effects necessary for that game (spatial processing for effects, for example).

This doesn't mean that I never want these features. In fact, typically in the devices that I want for mobile application, I am likely to want those features. And, there are other ways to get them, like using a Fiio BTR5, which has both noise cancellation and a microphone (which means it's a good option for using headphones to make phone calls).

The idea of having these features separate from the headphone is an advantage. The technology for DSP is constantly changing and evolving. Offloading that to a device that can be replaced makes sense, and allows me to use these timeless headphones as I want to use them.

Where Do I Go From Here?

So am I done with headphones? Not by a long shot. I have come to a point where I think the headphones that I listen to are more a part of how I want to listen to music at a given point in time, than they are solely about accuracy / neutrality. And, honestly, I want to have some of the truly iconic headphones in my collection, and be able to compare them with each other to understand how they earned their reputation.

Some of the brands (I won't name the models) of headphones I want to check out include: Sony, Beyer Dynamic, Philips, AKG, Samson, and more. I also might check out some more models from Sennheiser and Grado. However, I don't know how soon I will be checking them out. I have developed several interests lately, including some different in-ear styles of headphones that we'll be checking out in future installments of this series.

	FediRing
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