The Wordsmith's Forge

 A crucial and immovable flaw in many security systems is humans.  If people can't get something to work properly, they will find a way to make it work improperly.  I find that there are a great many places online that I don't think need passwords.  It's just something I don't want to fuck around with for trivial uses.  So either I don't go there, or I work around it.  The problem comes when people do exactly the same thing with a really, really important system.

Here's a look at book authors as product brands, and what contributes to success. 

More and more online booksellers are practicing censorship.   This directly harms writers by preventing them from selling their work; it directly harms readers by preventing people from spending their money as they see fit.  

Some people say that this doesn't count as "real" censorship because it's done by corporations rather than government.  But it has exactly the same effect on your ability to write, read, sell, and buy what you choose.  Look around.  Corporations are doing a lot of destructive things that the government was forbidden to do because those cause problems, only nobody forbade corporations because nobody thought that businesses would ever have  the power to do government-type things.  Now they do, and it's a disaster.  

When a small business makes personalized decisions, it has a small impact; but when a megacorp does, it has a government-sized impact.  That makes it not okay anymore.  If you're going to function in an area where you control most or all of the market, then you have an obligation to serve ALL of that market, not cherry-pick just the customers you personally like and freeze out everyone else.

If you think this is only happening to erotica, it's not.  That's just a genre where it's relatively easy to catch people censoring content.  People who think that censorship is okay will manipulate everything according to their -- usually awful -- worldviews.  So there's probably censorship in other areas such as politics, religion, sexual health information, current events, etc.  It's a new bottleneck between creators and customers.

This is becoming a huge issue in books, videos, music, all kinds of cultural entertainment.  It's a problem with online money handlers who think that they have a right to tell you how you can spend your money.  Shopping in niche markets can be fun, but it's less efficient and effective than shopping in a few large places.  It wastes your time and causes you to miss some stuff that is available but out of easy reach.  

Here's a sharp verbal brawl about the state of publishing and who is taking advantage of whom. 

 Basically this is a digital costume for webcam.  It's a cool starting point, and may appeal to otherkin in particular.  One immediate drawback I noticed: the parabolic ears don't move with changing expressions.  Yes, that leaps out at me.  It's like having a human face whose mouth doesn't move.  I have probably panned more furry comics for that than every other flaw put together.

 Yeah, that's a problem.

Corporate censorship is becoming more of a problem.  (Link courtesy of my partner Doug.)  It prevents people from expressing themselves and from accessing the full range of available material.  It does no good for something to exist if people can't reach it.

There's a problem when corporations tell people what you can and can't do with your own money, and especially, when corporations are allowed to do things that the government is forbidden to do just because they aren't officially the government and nobody realized that corporations could gain  that kind of power.

Here's a thoughtful post about gender on forms. I love the idea of user-created tags. That would be both useful and inclusive.  Also it would stop mandating that a bunch of people lie all the time because their sex/gender is not a permitted option.

When Google Chrome first came out, I loved it.  Then they messed with it, shrinking features I used and adding stuff I didn't.  This annoyed me, but it was still the best search engine.  As Google has assimilated everything in sight, and grown more invasive of privacy, I have grown more and more disgruntled.  I am no longer a willing supporter.  I've started using other search engines when I can, although I still have to fall back on Google because it lists more things.  I've also cut way back on my use of all manner of "like this" features.  

But this is about how I feel now.

I'm noticing a pattern, and I wonder if anyone else feels the same way.  It goes like this ...

* I see a link about a movie or other product that interests me.  I click on it.

* The content has been removed, with a little note that says the copyright owner had it taken down.

* My interest in the product drops noticeably.  I am less likely to watch it or buy it later, even though I had previously liked it.  The original trailer or ad, by calling attention to its nonpresence, is actually unselling the product. 

I suspect that this may be more than an isolated incident.  Cyberspace culture really likes to recommend things to friends. Interfering with that process may undercut the want-buy-have cycle that companies seek to activate.  It would be interesting to design a study to test for this and see if it's a measurable effect.