Ten years ago, (digital) life was just like today
Look what I found in my bookmarks.
One of the things I have done, and am still doing, to kill time in these months of lockdown is reordering my bookmark collection, which goes back to the 90s. Among the bookmarks that I saved on May 18th, 2010, there are at least two that could have been written this year:
Facebook Privacy: A Bewildering Tangle of Options
“To manage your privacy on Facebook, you will need to navigate through 50 settings with more than 170 options. Facebook says it wants to offer precise controls for sharing on the Internet."
<u><em><strong>CAPTION:</strong>
<a href="/img/facebook-privacy-options-in-2010.jpg" target="_blank">Click for bigger version</a>
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The italian goverment wants to self-regulate the Net
This was a proposal to “create a sort of stamp for online spaces that acts as a “guarantee of respect for the fundamental principles of freedom” and “against the malicious use of information and disseminated content”. A way to ensure users that the contents do not incite “hatred, violence, discrimination, acts of terrorism, or that offend the dignity of the person, or constitute a threat to public order”, and reconcile “the safeguard of public safety, the dignity of people and their right to privacy and confidentiality “.
Same old, same old
These are stories that could have been really written this year. The only difference is that the equivalent of that 2010 “stamp for [safe and trustworthy] online space” (which, as far as I can remember, never happened) has been totally delegated to Facebook, in Italy and elsewhere.
Conclusions left as exercise for the reader.
Greetings from 2010.
(This post was drafted in May 2020, but only put online in August, because… my coronavirus reports, of course)
Who writes this, why, and how to help
I am Marco Fioretti, tech writer and aspiring polymath doing human-digital research and popularization.
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