The 131st Block: Kick Twitter to the curb; bring back Tumblr, forums
And someone explain what resp. mean
This week…
I went down a resp. rabbit hole. I still don’t know if I used it properly; nobody seemed to be able to explain to me what ‘resp.’ means. At first, I thought it is short for respective(ly) or wrt, then responsible (for), but neighter fits every single use of resp. in this document about the EHF European League. Take this sentence:
In case the national regulations foresee a place in the EHF European League Women for a national cup participant, only the winner resp. the runner up of the national cup is entitled to receive this specific place.
There are 42 more instances where the abbreviation appeared in the document, but its first mention never spelled out. Googling confused me even more, although I learnt it probably has roots in German, ie. bzw., or beziehungsweise, which means ‘respectively’ or ‘or as the case may be.’ That it has German roots make sense—the document is about handball regulations in Europe, and Germany is a handball country. But explain this:
The respective software will be provided by the EHF without any costs for the club resp. the national federation.
Notice that ‘respective’ is spelled in full.
Or this:
Informational or promotional content may be shown up until the start of the official entry ceremony resp. 10 minutes prior to the start of the match as well as during halftime until the teams re-enter the playing court and after the match.
I cannot recall anything else linguistically that has stumped me more! And I thought I expertly covered UN meetings filled with legalese and academese spoken in International English. I understood ‘planification’ to mean ‘planning,’ ‘eventual’ to mean ‘possible,’ ‘assist’ to mean ‘attend,’ ‘actual’ to actually mean ‘currently’, and that the ‘delay’ is actually the ‘deadline.’ Many of these are false friends in European languages, but ‘resp.’?? I even consulted the European Court of Auditor’s guide called ‘Misused English Words and Expressions in EU Publications’ but without any success.
Someone who speaks Euro English and German has to have an explanation. Where did this abbrev. come from? Why is it used like it is understood by all English readers? How is it spoken out loud? I have a lot of questions.
My frustration aside, here’s a selection of top stories on my radar, a few personal recommendations, and the chart of the week.
Twitter’s blue check: Vital verification or status symbol?
Barbara Ortutay for AP on the brief history of Twitter verification:
The story of Twitter’s blue checkmarks — a simple verification system that’s come to be viewed as an elite status symbol — began with some high-profile impersonations, just as the site began taking off in 2008 and ’09.
[…]
Then, in June 2009, St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa sued Twitter, claiming that a fake account, using his name to make light of drunken driving and two Cardinals pitchers who died, damaged his reputation and caused emotional distress.
LaRussa eventually dropped his lawsuit. But in June of that year, Twitter’s then-CEO Biz Stone introduced a verification system to sort out authentic accounts from impostors. The benefit would be to the holders of the accounts, but also to everyone else on Twitter. They could be sure, if they saw the blue check next to a name, that what they were reading was authentic.
It’s important to know your history. It’s the end of the era of mainstreaming misinformation. We’re entering the era of legitimising misinformation.
Tumblr will now allow nudity but not explicit sex
Adi Robertson for The Verge:
Tumblr has made an update it hinted at in September, changing its rules to allow nudity — but not sexually explicit images — on the platform.
The company updated its community guidelines [on November 1], laying out a set of rules that stops short of its earlier permissive attitude toward sexuality but that formally allows a wider range of imagery. “We now welcome a broader range of expression, creativity, and art on Tumblr, including content depicting the human form (yes, that includes the naked human form). So, even if your creations contain nudity, mature subject matter, or sexual themes, you can now share them on Tumblr using the appropriate Community Label,” the post says. “Visual depictions of sexually explicit acts remain off-limits on Tumblr.”
Taking the opportunity to re-captivate the base it lost at The Great Tumblr Exodus of 2018 during thing ongoing Twitter Migration, Tumblr announces a timely semi-reversal of its nudity policy that drove people away in the first place.
Bring back forums
Gaby Del Valle simple plea on Dirt:
Sometimes I think about how there used to be hundreds of small kingdoms and principalities in Europe, each ruled by its own set of inbred weirdos. There was occasional cross-pollination through marriage, but each place nonetheless retained a distinct cultural identity. Eventually these kingdoms unified, creating the Europe we know today: a few dozen countries where people’s regional pride (and conversely, their regional animus) is forced to exist within a broader national identity. Today’s internet functions in a similar way. There used to be millions of websites. Now there are only like, four. There’s a simple solution: we need to rebalkanize the internet. More specifically, we need to bring back forums.
I understand there are currently a few forum-like websites out there, namely Reddit, but they aren’t true forums. Aesthetically, forums looked—and continue to look—like a product of the early internet. The homepages were simultaneously simple and chaotic: there were no images or graphics, just modules listing each subforum and the number of threads and posts in each. Each website relied on a similar template, with the only real difference being the background and text colors. One forum I frequented in my early adolescence, from which I downloaded Sims 2 custom content, had a black background with white text; the only aesthetic difference between that and the skincare forum I lurked on in my teen years was that the latter was pink. I don’t even think we had profile pictures—if you wanted to express yourself, you had to do so via your signature. These forums looked more like Excel spreadsheets than social networks, and the bare-bones style emphasized the point of the website: to discuss a single topic, usually a relatively specific one.
A common complaint about social media is that it encourages people to present themselves as a “brand,” to project a polished, curated image into the world. Forums, at their very best, are the opposite of that.
Well, there are a lot of talks about where to go post-Twitter, and this is quite the take.
What I read, listen, and watch…
I’m reading a report by Democracy Reporting International on the potential of AI image generators to complement fake news with bogus visual ‘evidence.’
I’m listening to how tech billionaires are reshaping US policits with Jacob Silverman on Tech Won’t Save Us.
I’m watching an episode on memes on Violating Community Guidelines with Brittany Broski and Sarah Schauer.
Reviews, opinion pieces and other stray links:
How do you solve a problem like Mehmet? by Megan Lunny for Columbia Daily Spectator.
Liberals consider amending Bill C-18 so smaller news outlets qualify for Big Tech revenue sharing by Anja Karadeglija for National Post.
LinkedIn has a fake profile problem – can it fix this blot on its CV? by John Naughton for The Guardian.
Malaysian politician Saifuddin Abdullah plagiarised U.S. representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s election campaign video. I mean okay, one said she’s contesting in New York, the other in Indera Mahkota—but you get the picture. Now foreign affairs minister, Saifuddin was a former communications minister.
Chart of the week
Amanda Northrop provides the chart for Benji Jones’ piece for Vox about what Lula’s victory means for the Amazon forest. Based on data from Brazil’s National Insititute for Space Research, during Lula’s first stint as a two-term president, Brazilian Amazon deforestation fell by more than 80 per cent. Deforestation under Jair Bolsonaro accelerated with more than 34,000 sq km disappearing from the Amazon, a 52 per cent increase compared to the previous three years.
And one more thing
“Free” speech.
Resp. = respiratory. That's what I know haha