Oh, dear. I've got far too much power at my fingertips.
Yeah. I I know that I I don't have this power.
Well, you could kind of reach over and randomly press buttons.
It doesn't feel very democratic, Ian.
It's not. You know,
the It's not.
One of the, buttons on here is actually this one here, does ducking. So it basically makes my voice only cut over the, tops of everybody else. Sounds like the, the toolkit of a despot. Yes. Although perhaps a despot with rather limited remit. But you Okay. Okay.
A tin pot despot.
A tin pot despot. I'm not sure I like the idea of me being a tin pot despot.
I didn't mean to accuse you of anything, but it just came out that way.
Yes. You didn't mean to. It just happened.
Fair enough. Do we have room for any announcements?
Well, we always have room for announcements, especially from you.
Okay.
Tell us your your announcements.
So the Leeds Testing Atelier was last week without wishing to date the podcast anyway, 23rd April. Oh, I've dated it. Oh, well. There's not a deadline. It's a pre-deadline.
The Leeds' Atelier Yeah. Was recently.
Recently.
The Leeds Testing Atelier happened recently.
It did. It did. So it's at a place called Wharf Chambers, which is a, social club and cooperative and music venue, and we had 14 speakers, I think, this time.
That's a packed program. It's just one day, isn't it?
Yeah. Yeah. So 2 tracks, 14 speakers, and the feedback's been really good. Everyone had a a really nice time.
Well, I have been a couple of times, and I would, recommend it to anyone.
So we're wrestling with the usual
You didn't have wrestling when I went.
No. Is
that a new innovation? Yeah. Is that one of the tracks?
The venue is not big enough. It's probably not accessible enough. Too many stairs. So everyone's like, you need a new venue. But we love the venue. So I don't know what to do, but it's the perennial post testing atelier question. What do we do? But, surely, there's not a 1,000,000 venues that are suitable in in Leeds, are there? No. No. And certainly not that that don't cost you.
The First Direct Arena
Yeah. Tens of thousands of pounds to hire for the day. So I don't know what we'll do, but I like having it at Wharf Chambers. It seems like the right place to me.
It it does have a suitably anarchic feel to it.
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You think testers are all anarchists, don't you? Organizational anarchists.
Maybe it's just the ones I know. You know the right ones. I do. I do.
Well, was it Anna Anna Baik who said? To test better, one needs to make the organization better? Yes. It was. Very wise.
Indeed. Mhmm.
So, yeah, the Italia went great. Everyone was happy. We had a good day. And we'll do it all again sometime. Not yet.
Not yet. No. Well, roll up roll up whoever you are, and watch on LinkedIn carefully for the announcement for the next leads testing atelier, which I won't ask Ash for a deadline for.
No deadlines. Have you got anything noteworthy?
Have I got anything noteworthy? Been working on other podcasts.
All day. I know. How do you have time for that? Oh, you don't?
I don't. Yes. I just do it instead of paid work.
You always prioritize the unpaid work over the paid work.
I've started a podcast with Esther Abramson of of Ilkley. We've started a podcast called manifesting agency Oh. Which is a very baffling name
I was gonna say. Which was a lot of AI generated?
It wasn't. No. The main justification for picking that over another name was that the domain name was available. So literally, the website for it is manifesting dot agency.
Does it have the words Delve and treasure trove on the, on the website?
It doesn't have any of chat gpt's favorite words on the website. But the the point of it is it's an interview podcast where we're going to interview people who get shit done.
Alright.
Not to put too fine a point on it. That's its kind of tagline. We sort of had a an explanatory episode between ourselves, but, we've now we're probably about to release the first interview, so it's quite quite exciting, actually. So, we'll see. And you're on our hit list, actually, because because of the Italia.
Oh, yeah. We do get that done.
You get that done?
We've literally just done it.
Yes. Yeah. You've got it done.
It got we got it done.
But you also got the first one done. Yeah. And that's the interesting one, isn't it? It's the one where there was nothing and how how you came anyway, I I can I think that could be an interesting story? So, yes, we may be coming to you at some point Okay. And inviting you to come on there.
Yeah. I'll always talk about the Italian. I I do love it dearly.
It seems as though my other podcast Endeavour Days is coming back, which is the least SEO friendly podcast name you can imagine. And you've got literally no hope of finding it on any any podcast directory. So you'd have to go to dayspodcast.com to find it. Right. It's much, much sillier than even this. And it's basically talking about awareness days with whoever will talk to us about
them Okay.
Whether or not they're qualified in any way. But the the high point of that was the episode 1 was, World Chocolate Day. And, my co host, Amanda, who works in PR, managed to get free chocolate for us, which we ate and then interviewed the the maker of the chocolate. That was great, and I had this vision that the podcast would continue on with us getting free stuff, but she never repeated the the feat of the free stuff. And it's had a massive break, but we're starting it again on Star Wars Day, which has just recently happened.
See what I did there?
So things. Things. Things. So who's gonna say it? In the interest of fairness Fairness. Can you remember who went first last time? I don't think I can remember.
We have the records.
The we we're going into the archives.
I'm just going into That's exactly what I'm doing now. I'm going into the archives.
Pushing away the cobwebs.
It was career paths for testing specialists on xzed security issue.
Okay. Well, sounds like in the interest of fairness then, you should go first this time, given my premier spot at the last podcast.
Premier spot. Yes. Well, honestly, it's only fair.
It is only fair.
So as usual, I I feel I tend to come up with things, at least in this latest incarnation of of this, that are quite broad and go in odd directions. But normally, they start somewhere in technology. And on this occasion, I seem to have departed a bit from our what we might call our wheelhouse. But I feel as though it actually has a kind of bearing. So let let's let me talk about it for a bit, and then we could decide if I'm out of my mind bringing this up in in on on lots of lot of things.
Yeah. As opposed to the extremely sane version of myself that normally rocks up to these things. So my thing is entitled rather broadly, local democracy. And this was inspired because there's this year in in the UK, there's lots of local elections. And if you and it's tomorrow, you can't
can't help it but bind it to a time. It's difficult, isn't it?
It is difficult. So there's been locally.
Stop. Stop. Let's not turn the podcast into a time machine. People will be like, what what day is this? I don't know. No. It's a week last Tuesday, tomorrow.
So this month in the UK, there's local elections. And this is sort of harking me back to a year ago when there was also local elections in May. Yep. And I stood in those elections for the town council in Ilkley. And quite a lot of people voted for me, but not enough for me to get elected, which is a mixed feelings about because we've had quite a a year in the politics of of this town, and it might have been quite uncomfortable.
Yeah. I imagine you like it.
And it's
well, a whole vista of commitments probably opens up once you're actually in it. Right? Yeah. Beyond the campaigning for the initial being in it.
Yeah. There's a lot of committees and meetings. And, despite what we may have thought given, what happened during COVID, it's actually illegal to have remote attendees at council meetings. They have to be in there.
Alright. Okay.
Attending the physical meeting. So it's, it's quite it's quite complicated. But so what had happened was a year ago was that Ilfe Town Council has got 14 seats, and it became clear that 4 of them would be uncontested. Right. And the local conservatives would just walk them, and that kind of upset me.
And this has not ever been something before that I've considered I could do, but for some reason, and probably due to the company I keep, it's it suddenly seemed like a good idea. So we, we set up a sort of group of independent counsellors, and we stood for election. There were 4 of us. I made a website because I'm the nerd.
That's the, the the ultimate contribution.
It is. And, it was very good. It had, green lighthouse scores across the across the board.
I thought you were gonna get that in.
I'll have to get that in.
Yep. Speedy, accessible?
Yes. It was. Yes. I it was very good. I was very proud of it, and it was almost irrelevant to anything, but I liked it.
But I suppose the reason I've kind of brought up this as a thing is that, actually, anyone can do that. Yeah. You can decide to to stand for your local council. Another thing that inspired me aside from my irritation at the undemocratic version of the world where people are elected unopposed is that I read this book by a chap called Peter MacFadyen who had been the mayor in Frome in Somerset. He and some people he got together with basically threw the political parties out of the council Right.
By getting elected a large group of independent That's good. Councilors. Yep. He's basically raising the idea that maybe political parties, while that I'm sure they have many useful virtues, are not actually very constructive at the bottom level of local government in your town or parish council or whatever it is.
Yeah. Yeah.
And they basically stood against all of the sort of these incumbents who've been there for years and took the council over. And then they really reformed how it worked and made it much more engaged with the people in the town. Yeah. And they they they did a lot of really good things. And I got a bit inspired by that actually.
So there's a few different things that you learn doing this, and one of them is, that there's some really funny rules like anytime anything you do, you have to keep a record of all the money you spend and submit election expenses afterwards. And, you know, there's limits to what you can spend, which, were never we never came close to them because I think they're aimed at stopping rich political parties from buying elections, basically. Yeah. And on the website, we you have to say who's promoting the the grouping. Yeah.
We actually had some leaflets, and the local green party helped us deliver them. They were really lovely about it, actually, and I think they quite appreciated what we were trying to do. Yeah. But I
think there's probably, like, some, like, knowledge barriers there as well, isn't it? Yeah. So, you know, how to do that and what to put on them and what makes it, you know, legal and isn't gonna get you into trouble.
Well, exactly. And that that that's a huge thing straight away is that you have to put on them. So their words have to be on them. Yeah. And even if they're slightly wrong, then if you were to win, then the political parties would be looking at suing you Yeah. Under elect electoral law and having the result nullified.
Yeah. So I guess that might be a barrier to, you know, getting involved because there's a lot, like, you say, rules which to some might seem, antiquated or difficult to to comprehend Yeah. And make into, like, you know, and be and just just general discouragement to get involved.
Yeah. Yeah. And, hilariously, we all sort of had this theory that we'd be elected and then we would do this and do that. And then only one of us got elected, so he's been on his own in the in the council ever since then. He's not buying them. But, he's now actually this year, he's the deputy mayor. So it's been interesting how that how that's come about, but it's less I suppose it's less less relevant. I think why why I'm saying this is because I think more people should think about doing this.
Mhmm.
And I feel as though if if we'd start I mean, we we started in April, and the election was in May. So there were no time to
sounds like just did time work to me.
Yes. Well, it it took that long before I realized that there would be this this gap in who was standing. Yeah. And I just thought, oh, no. We gotta gotta do something about this.
But if we started earlier and had more of a run up, I think we might have had a good chance of of a bit having an influence Yeah. In the local sort of decision making. The town council can set a small level of taxation in addition to the council tax that gets put on top of the and and gets provided to it. So it has some kind of budget. The great thing is that councilors can do anything that any person can do.
So they can start things. They're in a good position to sort of show leadership in local towns and communities. And that actually shouldn't be underestimated because there's nothing really that there that there are a bunch of funny rules. And in fact, all these councils have a town clerk or somebody whose main job it is is to explain to the councilors what's legal and what isn't. Yeah. And you can there's that hilarious video, isn't there, the of, the famous Hanforth Parish Council meeting where
your power here.
Where the indomitable Jackie Weaver ejected people from the Zoom meeting with with great aplomb. It is a marvelous thing. We'll include a link to it. But, it's very funny. Councils need somebody counsellors are just like regular people, and they need somebody to explain, you know, the what they're allowed to do Yeah.
And how things have to what things are a legal requirement and maybe what other things are more of convention. Yeah. But what they did in Frome was quite revolutionary there, and they made I think they made their council much better. And I think we could do that here. And I think that people, other people who might be listening to this, could do it in their communities as well. Yeah. And, of course, the big downside is it's very time consuming.
Yeah. Because one of the notes that I put on was, that local democracy seems, somewhat like entertainment for the retired from the outside. So, if you're if you have a, an ongoing career, which takes up a lot of your time and maybe a family, then it might be hard to fit such things around all those other responsibilities, which I guess that's probably, like, always been a challenge, hasn't it, for for local democracy and getting local people involved because, you know, we're all very busy.
Yes. And that that's absolutely the case. And, you know, people who take on leading roles in these things so the mayor of Ilkley up until the last the end of the last council was a working person. Yeah. You know, he he stood down, I think, frankly, because he was tired. Yeah. You know, it's hard, hard work.
Yeah. There's only so many things you can fit into life. There is. Yes.
But I think that for some people, there's there is a level of of community mindedness that some people have got. Yeah. You know? I mean, you you, for example, are you know, you put the Italia you help put the Italia on Yeah. For that community of of testers.
But and some somebody else might feel community minded in their in the town they're in and feel like Yeah. And I would love it if people who listen to this sort of thought, actually, let's try and get together and sort this out. Let's try and get national politics out of local councils. Yeah. It just it's not great that councilors are standing up, parroting stuff that is coming from Yeah. Westminster or parliamentary
offices, basically. Yeah. So what was your experience of running and then being on, like, the social media side? So I assume you'd said things on social media like, I am running for a local counsellor. Yeah.
I did. But, honestly, nobody's very interested. I mean, it's not it's not like I am appearing in the latest Lord of the Rings film as Gandalf. You know, that that that's the sort of thing that people would be interested in.
Well, if you would've put a picture of yourself as Gandalf saying that you're running for local councilor, well, you probably would've got a lot more votes, wouldn't you?
Yes. And I could've said an election arrives. Exactly what it means to me. You know, but, yeah, I I suppose it's it's not that interesting. And I think a lot of people think it's pointless. Yeah. And I don't think it's pointless.
So do you get like, yeah, that sense of like apathy? It's like, well, why would you do that?
Yeah. I mean, if you ask people what what what council wards do they live in, most people don't know. No. They don't even know. They just and and and maybe when they go to the ballot box, even if they vote, which most people, I think, don't in those elections, even if they make it there, they're probably just ticking the political party that they wish to promote or maybe just not ticking the one that they wish to punish.
Yeah. Well
Yeah. And, you know, people say local elections are just a popularity contest to see if people like their government in Westminster or whatever. But I feel like there's a real opportunity to do good in in that and that for some people, it would be it would be worth it. And Yeah. For me, it took me years. I I it never occurred to me I might be someone who would be able to do that, and I did it. And, actually, I feel as though it was the right thing to do.
Yeah. I guess you see lots of career politicians, don't you? Which, again
Not not on local councils.
Not on local councils, but in general, politics as a career, which, to me, always, like, makes me think of not getting involved. Red flag. Red flag. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. So it's like, what can I as a as a as a citizen do about this? Because I don't want a career in politics. No. I like my career.
Yes. So I think most people in this country anyway would say they they don't trust or like politicians. Yeah. And that's, I think, at the heart of it is that, actually, it would be better if there were no politicians on local councils.
Yeah. And So just interested engaged local people
Yeah.
Who want to make things better.
Yeah. With in a pragmatic way. Yeah. Not an I not necessarily an ideological way.
Yeah. Because there is the slight phenomenon of, people pertaining to be independents, but it's like, well, you know, you are Labour or Conservative.
Yeah. You're not throwing out at your you're throwing out at your medical party.
Yeah. Absolutely. But you can stand as an independent. No problem.
And you also get brochures through the door as we've seen this month for the local election Yeah. Where it appears that it's one party's brochure. But at the bottom, if you look in the small print at the bottom, it says promoted by so and so and so and so on behalf of but naming no names. Yeah. A person.
And, you think, well, that's not them. But, in you know, these things are like fake like newspapers, but are political you know, that that there's all sorts of shenanigans that goes on. And that all is paid for by centrally funded political parties Yeah. From donor money and all the rest of it. And it'll be just well, I feel as though maybe this this thing might have been a bit too vague.
Well, I guess so you've got, like, arcane rules, which might put people off, career politicians, and then the shenanigans that we've just described where, you know, you obfuscate over, like, who you really, really are, or maybe put it in a small corner in the bottom left of the leaflet, which you'd have to put your best reading glasses on to see. Yes. So there's all that which helps to sort of sort of put people off, like standing for for in local democratic elections or even voting in them, let's let's be brutally honest.
Yeah. Yeah.
And maybe, let's say, on social media, people are less engaged, less interested in well, it's kind of met with a shrug what you're doing really. But I guess with the odd example, it's even though one out of the 4 got elected and you got x number of votes, still changed the dynamic of the council, didn't it?
Actually, yeah, it did. And, one of the things that happened when the votes were all counted, the town council was split into 2 evenly sized groups. Yeah. One of the groups was the conservative councilors, which was half of it. Then the other group was tends to, I think, refer to itself as the progressive counsellors, which was, basically composed of a green counsellor, some Labour counsellors, Lib Dem. I'm trying not to miss anybody out.
It's okay. You don't have to get it.
And, The other party. And an independent Yeah. Who who's dropped into this by his foolish agreement to, to join
with him. Without without his, contemporaries who joined it with him.
It was evenly split. And so what happens is that, each side nominated a a person to be mayor, but there were 7 it was 77. Yeah. And the way that it works was the outgoing mayor had a casting vote, and he cast that casting vote for according to the popular vote in the town. So he said, well, more people voted for progressive parties than for the conservatives.
And therefore, he his casting vote was cast to so we have Ilkley's first Labour mayor, but he his rationale and his ability to to democratically do that was founded on the fact that if the votes that the 3 of us who didn't get elected had not been cast Yeah. Then it would have been the other way around. Yeah. And he would have had no mandate to to choose the progressive Yeah. Mayor. So it did actually make a difference.
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. When I think about technologists and democracy, like, from a wider point of view, technology and, democracy and elections. Obviously, there's a lot of fear there as well, isn't there, about what technology can do in terms of influencing elections.
Yeah. Obviously, that tends to be at the the national, you know, the general elections in the UK and, you know, national elections in whatever they're called in other countries. So I think, to me, technology should be a like a force for transparency within elections. Yeah. So you should be able to see who's backing who and who's paying for what, whoever the donors are to individual parties or candidates or whoever it is.
Because there's one thing, you know, it might be within the current rules, but whether or not it's ethical or correct or not influencing it, a person or a process in a way that it shouldn't be, is is a different thing. So it's like, I think technology could be good from a transparency point of view, but I think it's it's the influence of technology is is generally feared because it's trying to change the results, not give you all the information you need in order to either, a, vote or, b, actually become engaged in the process and start to, you know, stand and understand what it you know, what what your responsibilities would be and what the you know, what the what all the various rules and processes are around what you are standing for.
Yeah. Yeah.
Because I think a lot of like, say you have, like, a town clerk to explain all these things, which suggests that it's quite impenetrable if you have to have a dedicated role to it to explain it.
Well, it's not so much that it's impenetrable. Exactly. Of a breadth than a depth of knowledge. It's kind of understanding the procedures and the processes and and, rather than having to look things up every time Yeah. Have someone there to advise. And that that that is really important. Yeah. But this kind of reminds me, maybe we can finish on nerdiness anyway, is that I have started a project which I'm doing quite slowly, but I'm I'm getting there. Unpaid. Unpaid.
Such will be my undoing. But I'm making a, I'm priming an AI chatbot Right. With the council's minutes and committee agendas and all of the documentation that it produces so that people will be able to ask, what does the council think about this? Yeah. How did how did the council vote on that? When was this decided on? Yeah. And get an answer based on the actual documentation rather than Yeah. People's assertions. Yeah. Because Politically weighted assertions about how things happened.
Yeah. Because the for the most part, everything's minuted and recorded because that's the way it must be. Yes. So it's actually quite a rich source of information, but you will only ever see it, At the time at the moment, if you just see a document, it's just a document of a a particular point in time on an issue, isn't it? Whereas, like, with a with a language model behind it, you could say, well, tell me the story of this.
You know? Tell me what how this particular you know, over the course of the last year, how was the council's thinking on this issue, whatever it is, evolved? So you get a very different point of view rather than just trying to, see from a point in time from a document that you find on the town council website and try and infer how they got to where they got to.
And I think that is that's kind of where I'm where I'm at with it, what I'm trying to do, but it's it's proving a bit, a bit of a challenge given that minutes half the time, the dates are backwards as well. So there's dates recorded as, there's one that was 23 what was what what did it say? It was it was basically the 4th December 2023. Alright. But it sounded like, because it was backwards, it was the 23rd December 2004.
So I've had to, sort of take some measures to make sure that there's metadata with the files and things like that so it knows when things happened. But I am sort of getting to the point now. I can open it up so I can type in what is the council doing about food poverty? And, back comes an answer. The Oakley town council has taken several steps to address food poverty within a community, and then it makes a list and, a grant allocation for food parcels on the 4th December 2023.
Yes. The council resolved to provide a grant of £3,640 to the Great Ilkley get together towards the cost of providing food parcels at Christmas to a 182 families. Right. So straightaway, I probably could have found that out using Google or something. But but this this is a lot clearer way to do that.
And and it talks about commitments to support and promote things, and and it talks about the council having set from 2024 to 5 and continuing till 2028. The council has resolved to create a regular annual budget of £8,000 per annum Right. To to to address this. So you're sort of looking at that thinking, well, that's really good. Yeah. And it actually, that's that's the kind of thing that I think citizens would want to Yeah. Be able to ask about.
So it's a it's a mix of what have we done and what the plans are for the future, which might be spread across multiple documents if you just want to look for yourself.
For sure. Yeah.
So So
it's not there yet, but when it is, maybe I'll, I'll share a link to it. Cool. Anyway, that was my slightly bizarro left field mad thing. But I would be very interested to hear from anyone listening who has considered doing something like that before or done it. Yeah. Let's hear some experiences. So I'll include the link to the flat pack democracy books that, Peter McFadgen wrote. Have a look. Think about doing something in your town next time your your local council has got an election.
K.
I'm gonna say that was my thing.
Nice thing.
Was it?
It was.
Was it an insane thing?
Well, it might have been slightly insane, but they don't all have to be, you know, like mine, articles from Wired.
Well, we need the articles from Wired.
Yeah. There's there's something to be said for a nice mix. I think. There. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely.
Are we going to do one of our interludes now? Yeah. Do I have to fall off my chair, or can we do something different? Well, I guess we could do something different. I think, we're about to have 3 episodes in a row that have come out on a regular cadence. Yeah. Yeah. Very scary altogether.
Well, I guess it's it's something that I've preached throughout my technology career as to, release on a regular basis, and then not done that for this podcast.
We we we have been a little bit irregular. Yeah. I mean, we'd have to own it and say Yeah. Our regularity has not been
Yeah. But I think we the expectations that we set contributed to the irregularity. So whereas we've tried a different
We have.
Different trying to get ahead of the number of episodes that we have.
We were we're trying to achieve flow. Yeah. In our virtual podcast factory, we won't have big piles of anything in front of any of the any of the stations. Yeah. What do we get this analogy is going to implode at some point?
So no deadlines. Just flow. Yeah?
Just flow.
Just flow. Just keep it moving. And to be fair, that is one of the one of the key things, isn't it? Yeah. I think with with delivering anything, you need to keep it moving. Yes. We're like we're like sharks. The moment that we stop where we begin to flounder. We have we have a
nap a nap for 2 years at the time, wasn't it? Is that what sharks do when they start?
Yeah. Pretty much. So, you know, I think for us, the the key thing is continuous movement. Yes. Even if it's sometimes sometimes fast, sometimes slower, but never stop.
I I I'm enjoying our current approach. I mean, I'm enjoying it. I'm enjoying the feeling that we're on top of it, and yet it's delivering the kind of regularity that podcast audiences apparently really want, Which is why half of you buggered off in our gap between 2022 and 2024.
To be fair, we've not been very reliable, haven't we?
No. We haven't. No. This is a new era for us of reliability.
Shows we can learn.
We can learn. Yeah. May maybe we will. Oh, dear.
So we'll call that a learning interlude.
That was a learning interlude. Uh-huh. Yes. I think we need to get some music for our interlude.
Music we could
use? Yeah. I'm looking sadly at the music we can't use. Maybe we could sing it. We're not gonna sing it, are we?
No. Because we still can't use it. I don't know, actually.
We we have to pay royalties, but we'd be allowed to to to use it if we sung it.
Maybe we could do a rendition of it.
So, Ash, save us from this conversational precipice and share with us the thing which we are going to be now talking about.
So I have brought a thing, which is, like, the antithesis of Ian's vague things about local democracy, which is a classic what a lot of things thing, where I say, I spotted an article in Wired slash the register slash Guardian Technology, what whatever the the the publication is. But this one was in Wired. But it caught my eye because it means that I can continue my crusade against TikTok. Well, that's what it means to me anyway, so that's why I picked it.
And of course, you would, not find any fault with, for example, Mastodon from what you've read in this.
Yeah. Although, I suppose they're in the same class because I've never used either of them. So I'm apparently, I just attack TikTok from the outside looking in like a,
You fling the slings and arrows out my misfortune at
it Yeah. Exactly. On a distance. Exactly. While haughtily refusing to engage with it.
I think that's, probably wise.
Yeah. Yeah. So my thing is the backlash against the algorithm in social media.
But is is there one?
So, perhaps the the the article has done some manufacturing there. Well, is that order to draw me in.
Is that like a continuum? So the most extreme version that you append gate to the name.
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
And then and then, further further in, it's like a backlash. And then, you know, in the middle, it's like some people were slightly irritated
Yeah. And,
you know, it goes the other way. Yeah.
So I think we're we're sort
of scaled.
I think for most people, it's probably in the slightly irritated, category.
But for some people, it's algorithm gate.
Yeah. Exactly. But I guess that's part of the complexity of the question, isn't it?
Yes. It is.
So,
I'll go gate.
So, essentially, the article was it either knows you a little bit too well Mhmm. Or is total rubbish. So that, again, then adds another layer of of complexity, because, again, you've you've got a continuum of people who are annoyed about it or not, and then you've got what are they particularly annoyed about about the algorithm that it's too creepy, as in it knows far too much about you, or just knows absolutely nothing about you and recommends you things that you know, like, excuse me, I've never even thought about that.
Because I find this fascinating because I am a rejector of cookies. Whenever anybody says, do you want to be tracked? I always say no. And Why would I? Well, that that but the thing is, I think that's the question. Because is it I don't think not being tracked reduces the ads you see. Yeah. It just reduces the relevance of them. Yeah. So people like me and presumably you who are very good at not being tracked, we probably get the worst, most annoying crap of the ads.
And I sometimes it starts to nag at my brain a little bit. Maybe I should be playing this game a bit more than I do. Maybe I should let some things track me just so that I cannot have ads for things that are just entirely nonsense.
So, guess from my introduction who's at the top of the list of the most terrifying album.
Is it? Is it is it is it TikTok?
It is TikTok. It is TikTok. So there's a And
I don't I'm not sure how I managed to to guess that from such a wide field of,
so there's a so TikTok, they apparently, after about an hour or so of watching videos, they've got a good handle on what you like and what you don't based on either how what you rewatch or what you linger on. So it's not even that you've seen the you don't need to see the whole thing. You just need to linger on it for a little while, and that gives it a little, oh, yeah. You're quite into that, are you?
That's a bit of raw that that there's a gap, isn't there, between what people say they're interested in and what they're actually interested in. Yeah. And there's no nowhere to hide with that, is there?
No. No. So it's it's gonna start to give you more of what you want after about an hour or so. Okay. Or advert. Yes. So basically, on TikTok, according to well, the Wall Street Journal did a study using bots, though, which TikTok then said, well, they're not representative of real people. Well, no. Because they're bots.
Yes. We we didn't want to experiment on real people.
Yeah. Because because that's that's wrong. So so, yeah, you either get algorithm driven content, as in stuff you haven't searched for, or you get adverts after about an hour or so. And after an hour or so, they're they they pretty much know or, like, have a good idea about what what you're into. So it targets quickly.
Do you think that's over and above what other other ones do? I mean, are they evil geniuses, or are they just we don't like them very much, but they're no more geniuses than Meta or
Yeah. So
Google or whoever.
So so 70% of YouTube videos are from recommendation that are watched, so it's very rare. I'm a searcher. I'll search for things. Mhmm. Whereas that's for the vast majority of views, that's not that's not the case. People will just take the recommendations. So I guess that's an interesting habit as well, isn't it, to take the recommendations or not? Not saying I always search. Sometimes I will just take the top off the feed and watch it if it's interesting enough.
Have you come across, CGP Grey
Yes.
On on YouTube? So I really like his stuff. And actually, I listen to Cortex, which is a podcast he does with Mike Hurley where he talks a lot about the sort of creative process and the way that they the way that he works, and it's it's quite interesting. Yeah. But he released a video recently, which is completely goes against the algorithm, And it's not even one video. So he released a rock, paper, scissors game
Right.
On YouTube where you play rock, paper, scissors. Only one of the videos is listed, and it's really short. Right. And then it leads into this massive network of incredible project. Yeah. But the algorithm hates it. Absolutely hates it. Yeah. And, you know, he's got a Patreon that pays for him to to do stuff. So that's how he can get away with it. But if he was dependent on YouTube for his income from it, I think it would have been not very good.
Yeah. Yeah.
Not a very good bet.
You can't monetize that particularly. You can't fill that with adverts particularly easily, can you?
No. No. So it was just interesting to me because that was an example of somebody doing something that was basically almost against the grain of the algorithm just for the value of doing the thing. Yeah. We'll put a link to it. I would recommend anyone to have a go at it because, actually, it's it's like an
iceberg. Yeah. And it's real
it is really, really interesting. Yeah.
So YouTube suggests sometimes what I consider to be strange things to me. So there's a person called Jordan Peterson, who is a Yes. Sort of from what I know, he's some kind of pseudo, philosopher who says things to shock.
He's a psychologist, isn't he, by training? Right.
Okay. But yeah, he There's a lot of like base misogyny and other things that he says, I think, in order to to to stir reaction is like a reactionary. That's how he seems to be anyway. Sometimes YouTube will recommend him to me. And if I wonder, where did that come from?
So have you successfully concealed from YouTube what you're interested in?
Well well, no. Because I watch YouTube quite a lot. And I think I I watch videos about video games, and there must be some something in the algorithm that has brought this video closer to my you know, to to the surface for me. So I don't know if there's a connection between people who watch video games, news on YouTube and people who connect with Jordan Peterson. Not everyone is the same. But Yeah. Yeah. So maybe maybe it's that. But I don't know too,
by the way. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know what, but it might just be a generic based on, you know, the number of, likes and subscribes a person has. It might just bubble it to the top of everyone's feed, and you get it regardless. But it's it's it's not transparent how it got there for me.
No. But I told it not to show it to me anymore. So and then YouTube music. I always find YouTube music really interesting because it generally suggests the same things that I always listen to and never really suggests anything new, which keeps me listening to music from the eighties nineties over and over again. But, again, well, how much of that is algorithm and how much of that is my behavior as well is interesting.
What I've done is I've just gone on on YouTube and gone into my settings and looked at privacy. And one of the things that struck me is that YouTube, there is a why have you recommended this? Yeah. And they're sometimes there. Have you have you tried that?
I remember that was on that was on Twitter, x whatever.
Is it is it not on have I imagined it on being on oh, it's only on ads, isn't it?
Yeah. Yeah. So it's not for you.
Seeing this ad. It's not yeah. It's not recommendations. Because I start paying again for YouTube Yeah. To to get out of the ads because I just I hate them so much.
Yeah. Yeah. As part of this article, it it highlights a couple of algorithm free social media applications. So there's one called pi.fyi, which started out as a, like, a curated newsletter. And then now, apparently, it's like a a newsletter curated by everybody.
So you can ask for recommendations on whatever you like, and they will, you will crowdsource a recommendation for whatever it is that you want to do, a restaurant you want to eat at or whatever it is, rather than an algorithm bubbling up to the surface for you based on, you know, number of reviews Yeah. How much that that restaurant has spent in ad revenue on that platform, you know, all those all those thing.
And then there's another one called Spread as well,
which has interestingly, it has authentication by design. So as in it it says it's real people only, so you have to get verified. Mhmm. You know, like you do on LinkedIn. You can do on LinkedIn, which I thought was, was quite interesting. And it's anti user generated content, so there's no likes or upvotes or anything like that. So you can't fake your you know, bubble something to the top, based on
Likes and
likes and What farms? Yeah. What whatever it is. So,
I might have to join this one.
Yeah. So it's kind of,
Are you thinking about that, Ash? Are you considering, I
try not to be hasty when it comes with comes to social media platforms now after working for a start up which wanted to be a social media platform and signing up for all of them to see what they were all like. Mhmm. And then having to unpick that mess later on in life was probably, yeah, it's a problem. Like, a healthy pause before joining a social media platform is a reasonable, is a reasonable shout, I think.
I will keep campaigning quietly in the background
Yeah. For,
for.
Yeah. Absolutely. Keep up the gentle peer pressure. When when Ian was was running for local council, there was also a gentle peer pressure for me to also do so, And then you got you got my partner, Gwen, involved as well, didn't you? And you were both sort of
I thought Gwen was very helpful Yeah. In pointing out the advantages of you being on the, on the local council. So Yeah. And the thing is, you could have done it and then not got elected. So you get the benefit of both worlds then. You you showed willing, but sadly
sadly,
the electorates wasn't wasn't quite enough there to
So, yeah, you've got these 2 platforms. Oh, god. I don't know whether I should say platforms or not. Apps. Because platform's like a trendy thing, isn't it?
I think we know. I think it's fair.
Is it fair?
It's a platform is what you build things on, isn't it? Yeah. And, yeah, it's a bit yeah.
It feels a bit like, you
know, a bit just calling. Tech tech bro y.
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So and the other interesting thing that I found was, there was a it's a company called well, not a company. It's a part of a university, and they're doing something called Prosocial.
And they're designing algorithms which are more for the social good rather than the commercial good of the, you know Radical. Yeah. Not based on ad spend, but more based on, like, how people have engaged with the with posts. So they're running a competition to design a Chrome plug in, which will interact with Reddit, x, and Facebook, And then you will obviously go to the site, run the plugin, and it will sort it based on the algorithm they've come up with. So So there's, like, a competition open for that
Oh, interesting. Same time.
So I thought that was quite interesting to see what people might come up with. Because I think one of the the challenges as well is that the algorithm lives in in the shadows, doesn't it? Because it's one of the more valuable bits of technology, bits of code on a on a social media site, isn't it?
But it's also it's everybody wants to game it, don't they? Yeah. Everybody wants to make the algorithm promote their thing and at the expense of some other thing. Yeah. And so if they explain what it is and how it works
Yeah. It'll just be immediately
Mayhem.
Every video will have
Exactly that.
To yeah. Exactly. So, you know, make sure to tap a screen if you, you know, support whatever the cause is. You know, which is nothing to do with supporting the cause. It's just about making sure that you tap the screen and, you know, give it a like or or whatever it is.
So there is there is that kind of that lack of transparency there as well. And it's not just social media either, is it? It's, you know, you go into ecommerce sites, they're very algorithm heavy as well, aren't they, based on reviews and all that other type?
The thing is, there there's some value in these things as well, and and maybe it's just conceptual value from the very beginning of them. But in on an ecommerce site, it's helpful to me to see things that I want to buy. Yeah. And on on social media sites, it's helpful for me to see things I'm interested in that come from people that I care about. So I might wanna follow a 150, 300, some large number of people, and maybe some of those are more important to me than others.
Yeah. It'd be nice if the algorithm would, you know, prioritize posts from the the people I'm more interested in in hearing from. But, you know, that's kind of where they started. But
Yeah. Yeah. So the the prosocial people say that we would like a better way to design algorithms with a bit more transparency because there is so much stuff. And the problem is with simple algorithms or simple feed sorting is that you're likely to miss anything that means anything to you, which I thought was quite an an an interesting point. So they're not saying we shouldn't have them at all. It shouldn't just be, you know, everything that's happened sorted by date in a list.
They see Twitter solved this early on with Twitter lists. Yeah. So what you could do was that you would make you would follow all the people you want that you wanted to follow, but then you might put make a smaller list that you would keep to yourself, but that was the one that you would read first. And then you only read the big one if, you know, if you had time afterwards kind of thing. And that that kind of delivered
Yeah. Some of us. Is that a paid teacher now?
I don't know.
No. I'm not sure.
I I
Yeah. Yeah. But, again, that's like an interesting device, isn't it, to to to help you to negotiate the sheer amount of stuff. So that's that's, like, a good tool, isn't it, to do to do the the stuff filtering? Because otherwise, it's just a a drowning, isn't it?
Well, I think it's also a tool that a lot of people wouldn't find out about or wouldn't be bothered to use. Yeah. Because obviously deciding on who's gonna be in your list and curating it and keeping it up to date is is work, and people are not often not prepared to do that.
Yeah. Yeah. So but yeah. So the prosocial people were like, if you have sim very simple feeds just show you, like it promotes recency bias so you'll you'll you'll literally only especially with something like x where it just scrolls past in an instant, you would miss a lot of stuff that might have meaning to you. And then it enables spam as well because if you're just in a if you're just in a simple sorted by date list, then if spammers or bots or whatever make it into your feed, then they will drown.
They will make sure it's full of what they want you
to say. Exactly. So there's some there's some really, like so by using an algorithm, you can you can lessen the impact of that because we should probably, like, be grown up about these things and say usually bots will end up on sites some way or another. They generally do. But they might not stay there for long, but maybe long enough in order to fill everyone's feed with nonsense.
Yeah. Well, often, the objective is very short term anyway. So
Yeah. So I don't know if it's about, I mean, like a wholesale rejection of algorithms because, you know, it's a bit old man yells at cloud, isn't it?
What a great analogy. But is is what's what is the value in them for for end users as opposed to for companies or platforms?
Yeah. So I think that's like the salient point, isn't it? It's probably gone too far, like, the other way.
In stratification.
Exactly. Exactly. So as a as a non Facebook user, whenever I see someone's Facebook feed, I'm amazed at the lack of people they know on it and the number of, you know, cat videos and AI generated images, which are now a mainstay of of, like, Facebook feeds. So the actual purpose of the app is totally different to what it used to be as a as a friend and family connector. It is now something else completely.
Yeah. It feels that way.
Yeah. So which, again, I I have the suspicion that, like you say, the algorithm has gone too far one way and is not there for the benefit of the user of the application. It's there for the benefit of someone else.
Yeah. Well, I think it's it's classic gamification Yeah. As described by Cory Doctorow.
So, yeah, algorithms, not necessarily bad, but as ever with most of the technologies that humans invent depends how you use them.
And, probably, ultimately, inevitably bad if they're on commercial. Yeah. Platforms. Yeah. Which is why Mastodon is so great because it's federated and no one person owns it.
No one pulling the strings, Yeah.
But, yes, I'm certainly gonna have a look at these these two things that you've identified there because I think, also, I can't bear not to be on a thing when I've heard of it, apparently, because I'm insane. But, I think it's interesting to see the experiments that people are doing to try and fix this. Yeah. And people do want to be connected, and they do want to have you know, be able to keep up with each other with with who they want to. They want to to know what's going on with people.
They don't necessarily want ads, and they don't necessarily want random stuff Yeah. That's been manipulated into their feeds by populists or other undesirables.
Yeah. Yeah. So the thing has a nice blend of algorithm denialists designing their own applications to say no no algorithms. Yes. Only humans involved. And then in the middle, you've got academics who are saying, well, actually, algorithms can be really useful. Just depends how we do them, and they can actually help you to navigate the tons and tons of stuff which you are assaulted with when you go on the Internet in whatever capacity it is.
And then at the far end, you've got late stage capitalism Yeah. And litification.
Yeah. Exactly. So you've got all the full Spectrum. The full spectrum of you have a technology and what it can be used for and what the implementation actually looks like in the real world depending on who's pulling the strings. Yeah. That was my thing.
That's a great thing.
2 things.
2 things. 2 good things, I think. We've got some diversity of things this time.
Yeah. I quite like the pairing of a a vague thing and a fairly specific thing. But there's always the ability to find, like, the higher level themes, if you like.
It's the zooming out is when it gets interesting, isn't it?
Yeah. Yeah. And I guess that's the thing with what a lot of things is that we get to talk about things.
Or we could say sentences that include the word things, like, 400 times.
Yeah. Exactly. So maybe if I just keep saying things.
But I think you should continue to say what you were gonna say about the thing about what a lot of things.
Is that we get to zoom out and we get to talk about and think about the higher level themes of technology. Yeah. Whereas often, you're in the details of it.
Yeah. And that's where we started, wasn't it? Yeah. Going for long walks Long walks. And having long conversations Yeah. And thinking that was interesting. Maybe we should follow. We recorded it. So we'll never know what we said on those those long walks. We just have to fight the emotional residue of it having been interesting.
So how do you get in touch with us at What's A Lot of Things?
Well, we have an email address.
We do. What is it?
Nobody sent it to the email yet.
We'll offer.
Do you know? Off the top of my head, I can't remember what it is.
It was, it was a source of great hilarity and most suddenly. Yeah. You remember now.
I don't remember exactly. Is it technology EOs at what sort of things dot com?
That's exactly it.
I'm embarrassed that my attention span is so short that even though 2 weeks ago I knew what it was because I just typed it into a website to create it. I now can't remember.
So please get in touch.
Please do. If you've
got any thoughts about what we've talked about or, well, anything really, or you just want to say hi, then please do.
Yes. We would love to hear from you. We would
love that very much.
And we will get emails because it it gets forwarded to both of us.
Yeah. Exactly. So we have no excuse.
Oh, dear. I mean, no. No. No excuse at all.
Yeah. We're accountable to you, the listener We are. And to each other.
We are.
Which is more accountability than I'm comfortable with.
Yeah. Yeah. I
I usually don't allow that level of accountability.
No. No. I think we've, we've said too much. Roll it back. Roll it back. It's
all left is to say thank you and goodbye.
Thank you and goodbye. Cut.