Tag: mefi

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Apple Rules*, Flat vs. Threaded Discussions

Issue 11 of my newsletter – subscribe here

I spotted this ad on the tube recently, and it made me think about Apple’s unappreciated dominance over the lives of hundreds of millions of people:

600 free prints a year – what a deal! Clearly there must be a catch, and sure enough, there is a tiny asterisk next to “App!” I wasn’t able to see it from my side of the carriage, but there’s an even-tinier line of text right at the bottom of the ad that doubtless discloses just how much you’ll have to pay to get those 600 “free” prints.

This kind of chicanery is prohibited by Apple on its App Store. There are very strict rules about disclosure of payments, and in particular, of the auto-renewing subscriptions that so many developers (including my company) are so fond of, since it’s kind of the only way we can people to actually, you know, pay for a service these days.

How strict? Well, there is a very specific set of wording you must use to describe how subscriptions auto-renew. The text labels on the subscription buttons must be over a certain size. Prices must be the biggest element of text, so you can’t just say “FREE!*” as the tube ad does:

In the purchase flow, the amount that will be billed must be the most prominent pricing element in the layout. For example, an annual subscription should clearly display the total amount that will be billed upon purchase. While you may also present a breakdown price that the annual amount is equivalent to or a savings when compared to weekly or monthly subscriptions, these additional elements should be displayed in a subordinate position and size to the annual price. This ensures that users are not misled.

It’s all very consumer-friendly, so I honestly don’t have a big problem with the intent of Apple’s rules. But just consider what’s happening here – Apple dictates the precise way in which you design key parts of your app. That’s unusual, to say the least. It’d be like the London Underground dictating that you couldn’t design adverts with asterisks and tiny disclaimer text. Maybe they should? But maybe not.

If you don’t agree with Apple’s rules, well, you don’t need to be on their platform, right? It’s not like you have to make iOS apps, after all. Why, you can just… completely ignore the majority of the smartphone app revenue in the US and UK!

So that’s a big problem. Apple may not command the lion’s share of smartphone users as Google does, but in many markets, iOS users spend far more money on apps than Android users.

A bigger problem is that Apple breaks its own rules by not disclosing pricing and subscription terms; by using push notifications for marketing (third parties apps are prohibited from doing so); by immediately cutting off trial subscriptions rather than letting them run for their whole term; and so on. It matters because Apple is now competing directly against many of the companies whose apps it hosts and rules over, from Apple Music to Apple Arcade to Apple TV+ and Apple News.

Apple would claim it tries to be reasonable when reviewing third party apps, and I don’t doubt the motives of their review team. However, the mere chance that your app update could be rejected, or worse yet, removed, whether for good reasons or just out of a misunderstanding? It’s literally terrifying for people whose livelihoods depend on Apple’s whims – like me.

All of this has introduced a chilling effect on third party app developers. I’ve seen many otherwise outspoken developers genuinely scared of voicing even mild criticism of Apple on private forums and chat rooms, let alone on Twitter or podcasts. They really think they could be blacklisted for criticising Apple, and while I am 100% certain that isn’t the case – because I and others have been far more critical in public and have never experienced any blowback – I understand their fear.

Now, as far as benevolent dictators go, you could do much worse than Apple. I’ve always had pleasant dealings with them in person. But no company should have that kind of complete and terrible power over tens of thousands of companies and hundreds of millions of users. We don’t allow it in the “real” world and so we shouldn’t allow it in the digital world.

—

I’ve been thinking a lot about the merits of flat versus threaded discussions online. Flat discussions are like those on Metafilter and other old-school forums where each reply follows directly from the one above it, while threaded discussions are like what you see on Reddit where replies can be in response to other specific replies, creating multiple “threads” branches off from one another.

For a long time, I believed flat discussions were generally superior to threaded ones. They helped promote coherent debate rather than encouraging groups of users to spin off on wild tangents, never to be seen again. In other words, Metafilter good, Reddit bad.

But I’ll confess – I’m spending a lot more time on Reddit than Metafilter these days (although I’m making a concerted effort to change!) That imbalance is partly because Reddit, having far more users than Metafilter, can cater towards more specific interests. There’s just no way I can get all the latest news about Edinburgh or Apple on Metafilter, that’s not what the site was designed for.

There’s another reason, though: I don’t think that flat discussions, as typically implemented by forums like Discourse or Metafilter, are working well for communities where there is serious disagreement about how discussions should unfold.

I’m being really unspecific here because I don’t just mean “communities with political disagreements”, I mean “communities where some people like making jokey comments and others dislike them” and also “…where some like tangents and others hate them.”

Flat discussions makes problems stick out more because everyone is forced to read them. In flat discussions, it’s possible for one or two people to completely dominate a discussion, or for irrelevant, misinformed, or extreme opinions to derail a conversation because it’s just impossible to ignore them; you’re literally posting right underneath them. In threaded forums, these sidetracks would end up downvoted and quarantined in their own threads.

Metafilter and other “flat” forums are trying to preserve a unitary community where we hope that just by talking enough, people can come to an agreement about how to run a conversation. Reddit assumes that’s impossible.

Watching

🎞️ Dr. Strangeglove. Fantastically funny and tightly-written masterpiece.

Reading

📖 Ways of Seeing by John Berger. A classic, which means you’ve probably heard most of its arguments in other books by now, but still very much worth reading. It doesn’t waste your time.

📖 The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal. Don’t be put off by the misleading “Lady Astronaut” tagline – it’s impeccably researched but packed with smart, interesting characters. A bit like Stephen Baxter crossed with someone who understand human emotions.

Visiting

🏛️ Michael Rakowitz at the Whitechapel Gallery. Funny and political and smart, an artist for millennials.

🏛️ Manga at The British Museum. A workmanlike exhibition that’s nonetheless essential if you have any interest in Manga whatsoever.

🏛️ AI: More than Human at the Barbican. Very much for the layperson who doesn’t mind watching a bunch of Google and Deepmind marketing materials that are wholly unquestioned. There was one video, made and filmed by Deepmind, about the work they’re doing with Moorfield Eye Hospital – but nothing about the many controversies about their use of patient data.

It is an occupational hazard of curating an exhibition about AI that you quickly run out of good stuff to display. Sure enough, two thirds of the way through, the exhibition devolved into a grab bag of “future stuff” that had nothing to do with AI. Must try harder!

Actually, one more thing – there was a machine-generated poem installation at the Barbican. It wasn’t any good. I’m pretty tired of this AI fetishism and star-struck curators who pretend machine-generated stuff is worth exhibition.

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The Once and Future Metafilter

Issue 10 of my newsletter – subscribe here

Metafilter is a weblog that anyone can contribute a link or a comment to. A typical weblog is one person posting their thoughts on the unique things they find on the web. This website exists to break down the barriers between people, to extend a weblog beyond just one person, and to foster discussion among its members.

I joined Metafilter shortly after it launched, snagging a coveted three-digit user number (482). This was in February 2000, almost twenty years ago – aeons in internet time. Not only have I been a member for most of my adult life, I’ve been there for most of my entire life there.

You know what they say about blogs and news sites, “don’t read the comments”? Metafilter’s unofficial motto is “Do Read The Comments”. Like Reddit, a relative stripling of only fourteen years, it’s the conversation and the community that keeps me coming back. Unlike Reddit, Metafilter is highly moderated and single-threaded, leading to more coherent and, frankly, less racist and sexist discussion.

(yes, not all subreddits)

In its first decade or so, Metafilter didn’t have to worry much about money. It was the early days of the internet, advertising dollars were sloshing around, we hadn’t had two recessions in a row, and there was less competition for eyeballs. The only thing it charged its users for was a $5 entry fee, and that was simply to keep the number of members low. Imagine that!

But times have changed and now Metafilter is suffering not only from precipitously declining advertising income, but also a continued gradual falling away of its active userbase. A few years ago, it moved towards a member-funded model, a little like public radio stations in the US, or more recently, like Patreon.

To be clear, there are still tens of thousands of monthly active members and likely many more non-members browsing around. But it’s a lot quieter than it used to be; newer forums and social networks have captured those who might otherwise have joined Metafilter.

I still read Metafilter multiple times a day. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been inspired by things I’ve read there. I would be a different, and worse, person were it not for the Metafilter community. So I was distressed to hear about its latest financial straits.

This is not a new development, so perhaps it shouldn’t be distressing, but the fact that it keeps getting worse is what hurts. And so while I have doubled my monthly donation, I’ve wondered what else can be done.

I’ve had to keep businesses afloat through tough times. I’ve had to make people redundant many times – and only after reducing my own salary (or cutting it entirely), often for several months in a row. And I’ve figured out how to move a business to one that is mostly subscription-funded.

So I think I know a thing or two about all of this, and so here are my recommendations for what Metafilter, or any other seasoned community-powered site facing similar dire straits, should do:

1. The overriding priority? Make more money.

Thanks to countless studies, we know that people make poor decisions when they’re stressed and anxious about running out of cash. I don’t mean Metafilter should pursue profit above all for the sake of champagne and yachts – I mean they should stop running at a loss. They can’t do this by cutting costs because their costs are already low, so they need to increase revenues.

How? Ask members for more money.

Not through a tiny, temporary bar on the website, but via an email sent to every registered member. All ~300,000 of them. Tell them about how the site needs their support, list some amazing posts and comments from recent months, and what their support will do in terms of new features.

I guarantee this will generate a shit-ton of money. Enough to stop worrying about money for several months, if not longer.

2. Sharing is caring

Make it easier for people to share excellent posts and comments from Metafilter. Amusingly, when someone suggested this their example was actually a tweet I made containing a screenshot of a lovely story about Stephen Hawking.

Apps like Instapaper let you create “text shots” from articles, by selecting some text and turning them into crisp images, complete with the article’s title and URL. This makes it easy to share them on Twitter and Instagram, where the articles can get a wider audience.

There’s so much good writing on Metafilter that deserves to be seen, and it’s the best advertisement the site could ever have.

3. Create a newsletter

OK, hear me out: The problem a lot of sites face is reminding people they still exist. It’s easy to fall out of the habit of visiting, especially now that RSS has died. That’s why so many sites rely on social media to share articles (hence point 2). It’s also why people like me are creating newsletters, so we can “push” things to your inbox.

Metafilter should do a biweekly roundup of the best posts and comments. Nothing too long, just the highlights. The good thing? It can politely ask people to consider subscribing.

—

Once upon a time I founded the Metafilter Wiki to help new users understand and navigate the odd traditions and in-jokes of the site’s community. I wrote the first few dozen pages myself, and paid for the hosting, and moderated it. It was a bunch of work and a real headache at times, but I did it because I cared.

If there’s a site or a service or community that you care about, whether online or offline, you’ve got to step up.

I know you’re tired. We’re all tired. But there’s probably something you can do, however small.

Watching

📺 Stranger Things Season 3 was delightful, and appears to have had all the money in the world dumped on it. Sure, it’s pure 80s nostalgia, but it’s good 80s nostalgia.

Reading

📖 The Rook by Daniel O’Malley. I don’t like abandoning books, but it was preventing me from reading anything else, so it had to be done. I can see why others might enjoy the worldbuilding, but I couldn’t face another 300 pages of exposition, not to mention the awful, unbelievable humour and dialogue.

Listening

📻 Talking Politics podcast on Hong Kong. An excellent primer to the recent mass protests – what they mean, why they’re happening, who’s protesting, how they affects China and Taiwan, and more.

Visiting

🌳 The John Muir Way or at least the stretches near Edinburgh. Who knew there were so many woods and forests and beaches here?!?

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English Literature

At my school, all students were entered into the English Literature GCSE. What this meant was that a couple of times a week, we would take out copies of ‘English Literature’ – things like The Crucible, A Passage To India, various Shakespeare plays, poems – and take turns reading them out.

There is nothing that kills a good story more than having a bunch of bored schoolboys reading out books like these, not to mention Shakespeare. For one thing, reading ‘blind’ means that the speaker has absolutely no idea what emphasis to put on the words; for another, it usually took a few weeks to get through a single work. Most of the time I’d already read the whole thing at home right after receiving the book, and so sitting in class took on a special kind of boredom.

As if this wasn’t enough, we would then have to write essays about the ‘significance’ of various parts of the books or plays. What did the red brick colonial house in A Passage to India signify? What is the meaning of this passage in Macbeth? And so on.

Despite all of this, I quite enjoyed some of the books – I still remember The Crucible quite fondly. However, it wasn’t until I saw The Merchant of Venice being performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company on a school trip that I realised his stuff was not only good, but actually really funny. See, until then, my experience of Shakespeare had been these readings in class, and a video of Richard II, where Richard was played by a woman.

Presumably some people liked this production, otherwise I can’t see why our teacher chose to show it. But I can’t think of a worse thing to show a bunch of schoolboys – it just seemed totally ridiculous. It was hard enough trying to follow the play on a TV, but the lead character swapping sex was just too much. I suspect a lot of students from my school still dislike Shakespeare due to these experiences. I don’t entirely blame my teacher, because she was just trying to prepare us for our exams (it was that kind of school), but it seems a shame nonetheless.

A comment on Metafilter reflects my feelings on this perfectly:

As far as I’m concerned, “Hamlet” doesn’t have a “point.” There’s nothing to “get.” It’s not something to see so you can check it off the “things I guess I should see” list.* Please! If that’s your reason for seeing it, don’t see it in the first place…

…I blame school. In school, we’re forced to read Shakespeare when we’re don’t want to. Most of the people I know who love Shakespeare, love him in spite of that, not because of it. Luckily, they already liked Shakespeare before encountering him in school, so the forcing didn’t seem like forcing. Or, if they were like me, they hated it. I hated “Romeo ad Juliet” when I was forced to read it in High School. I hated anything I was forced to read, just because it was forced on me.

Most people in my shoes feel a distaste for whatever was forced on them for the rest of their lives. At 42, I’m only JUST getting over my distaste for math. I can see math is a beautiful subject, but because it was forced on me before I was ready for it, it’s hard for me to shake the desire to rebel against it. And because of gym class, I wonder if I’ll EVER learn to like sports. Luckily, I had other formative experiences that stopped me from associating Shakespeare with school. So I like Shakespeare.

Also, in school, one is pretty much told that we watch/read plays to “get the point.” It’s all about Theme, Message, Social Import, blah, blah, blah. It’s not about crying when Cordelia dies or laughing when Bottom turns into an ass. School ignores or — worse — scorns the best part of fiction: the laughter, the tears, the emotional spice!

Finally, school teaches us that smart people are supposed to like Shakespeare — or at least read/see his plays. If you don’t like it, you’re dumb. So we wind up with a bunch of people who don’t really want to read or see Shakespeare but feel like they should. Of COURSE these people — once they’ve finished with the pain of sitting through “Hamlet” — don’t want to do it again

He’s right. In my class, we never talked about the emotions of the play. We never thought we were supposed to laugh at this stuff, or treat it like anything but a chore.

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The GiveWell Fraud

A few weeks ago, I read a New York Times article about a new charity organisation called GiveWell, founded by two young ex-hedge fund managers. The story described how these two mavericks were about to shake up the charity world by using their financial skills to demand and interpret data from charities, and thus discover how efficiently they used their money. These findings would then be used to help donors choose a charity that would give them the best bang for their buck. Some people, however, criticised GiveWell for simply rewarding charities that had the time and resources to provide the extensive data they demanded.

I remember thinking that GiveWell seemed to have an interesting idea in theory, but I was sympathetic to the complaints. In any case, I don’t know much about the charity world (other than what I’m doing with Let’s Change the Game, but that’s another story) so I didn’t feel like passing any judgement.

A little later, on December 30th, a user called ‘geremiah’ posted a question to Ask Metafilter. Geremiah wanted recommendations of websites that evaluated the effectiveness of charities. The fourth comment on that post came from ‘Holden0’ who recommended GiveWell. Geremiah selected Holden0’s comment as the ‘best answer’ and went on to criticise a user, Miko, who’d recommended another site.

Miko proceeded to look at GiveWell’s website, and discovered that Holden0 appeared to be none other than Holden Karnofsky, the co-founder of GiveWell.

(I have to say, this has got to be the most stupid part of this entire story. If you’re going to set up a fake account, why base it on your real name? Sheer insanity.)

A new thread was started on Metatalk to discuss this apparent fraud. Self-promotion is strictly prohibited in Ask Metafilter posts, and it’s even worse if you don’t disclose it. Setting up a second ‘sockpuppet’ account to support your own opinions is also prohibited. Besides these rules though, it would’ve been distasteful to promote your own charity site in such a deceptive manner, while also rubbishing other websites.

Unfortunately, the owner of Metafilter confirmed that both Geremiah and Holden0 were registered by the same person – this was self-promotion, and it was a fraud. Holden0 eventually appeared in the thread to apologise, and claim that lack of sleep was responsible for his lapse in judgement. Members of Metafilter then proceeded to find numerous other cases of Holden promoting GiveWill on other websites without disclosing his involvement – and invariably criticising other sites at the same time.

The board of directors of GiveWell initially didn’t believe what was going on, and then admitted that Holden’s actions were wrong. However, they – and every single other defender of Holden – said pretty much the same things:

  • It was wrong – but it’s forgivable
  • We know Holden, and he’s a good guy
  • Metafilter members are a bunch of vigilantes, dispensing mob justice
  • Worse things go on in the world, why focus on this?

It’s nice that people are so willing to forgive Holden repeatedly promoting his own charity in a reprehensible and deceptive manner. And perhaps Holden is a good guy. But he’s an adult, and he’s supposed to be responsible for influencing the flow of millions of dollars to charities; you would expect him to have some basic sense of judgement.

As for Metafilter members, as far as I can say, they’ve done everyone a favour by uncovering this fraud. No doubt other frauds go on, but they happened to discover this one because Holden was especially foolish in his choice of username, and it’s natural that they would be irritated with someone scamming the website they belong to. They have done nothing except try and get word of this episode to as many people as possible. Not everyone there is an angel – far from it, judging from the assorted ad-hominems and insults that have been flung at Holden. But as far as I can tell, they have not lied or threatened anyone.

Why am I posting about this?

I think what Holden did was wrong. I think his friends are wrong to defend, or dismiss, the indefensible, and then go on to criticise the very people who uncovered the fraud, as if that were a worse sin. But the main reason I’m posting this is because an awful lot of people think that this type of fraud is not only acceptable, but commendable. It’s the way you do business – sure, some people might disagree, but if you want to get ahead, then you do what you have to.

It’s true that far worse things go on in the world, but this sort of fraud goes on every day by people who convince themselves that it’s OK, especially if no-one finds out. It truly is a slippery slope, and it’s not OK. It shows a profound lack of judgement and morals. If people want to continue trusting GiveWell, that’s fine, but they deserve to know what Holden did, and that’s why I’m writing this post – to link to the Metatalk thread, so that when you search for ‘GiveWell’, that’s the very first thing you see.

Metafilter members are currently assembling a page on the Mefi wiki (which I set up, but otherwise have little to do with) detailing all the events of this fraud. If you’re interested in hearing more about GiveWell, here’s an insightful critique from someone within the charity world pointing out the inexperience of the founders, and the fact that they are not actually doing anything that hasn’t been done before.

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Remembrance of Books Past

Remembrance of Books Past – an article by Ray Bradbury in which he talks about the idea of rewriting books from memory; a never-realised sequel to Fahrenheit 451. “Why not a sequel to ‘Fahrenheit 451’ in which all the great books are remembered by the Wilderness People and are finally reprinted from memory. What then? Wouldn’t it be that all would be misremembered, none would come forth in their original garb? Wouldn’t they be longer, shorter, taller, fatter, disfigured, or more beautiful?” (via MetaFilter).

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Ask Metafilter

Ask MetaFilter – truly one of the best ideas that’s hit the Internet this year. There are other websites that provide general advice, but none with the community and (some might say) highly intelligent and educated userbase of MetaFilter.

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Mefi photos

Metafilter UK Oxford meetup photos – a highly geeky and highly successful meetup of Metafilter UK members, featuring drinks, noodles, more drinks, a run-in with the police, a gig in a dive bar, yet more drinks and ice cream. I had a lot of fun and met a bunch of very interesting people; hopefully another one will be organised soon.