Richard Hillgrove, in The Guardian, writing Twitter cannot be allowed to operate outside the law:

The central point here is whether Twitter and Facebook, as publishers of content, should be as accountable as traditional media. The problem is one of scale. Traditional media controls its content by employing finite numbers of staff, freelance journalists and news agencies. In contrast, Facebook have an army of “citizen journalists” numbering 500 million and Twitter 175 million and don’t employ any of them.

Clearly, they are going to have to introduce a delay mechanism so that content can be checked before it goes up. There will have to be a completely different structure, which will be difficult when the whole thing about Twitter is its spontaneity.

Oh dear.

To be fair, Hillgrove’s Guardian profile describes him as “a business and political public relations consultant”, but this is precisely why anyone creating laws and regulations or even talking about doing so needs to bloody well research, rather than shouting their mouth off. Hillgrove’s comment might have a certain right-on set of Brits and others going “Yes! Twitter must do this”, but Hillgrove clearly has no comprehension whatsoever of the sheer amount of content social networks and other major websites generate. It’s not remotely feasible for any of it to be checked—YouTube gets more then two days’ worth of video uploaded every minute. How the hell can that be checked?

Hillgrove also bleats about accountability (arguing the likes of Twitter should be treated like traditional media) and reeling in social networks unless we “decide to become an anarchistic society”. Much better, clearly, that we become a society that stops the equalising nature of the web and curtails free speech, because otherwise rich people get caught short. And, yes, I realise Twitter and Facebook have an appalling herd mentality at times, but often the herd uses its powers for good—something that is diminishingly so for traditional media.

Hat-tip: Fraser Speirs.

Poor Adele. I’m CRYING MY EYES OUT right now, having read The Guardian’s piece on the poor singer. Adele, the multi-million selling artist, has had to… sorry, I’m finding it hard to bring myself to type this… she’s had to pay tax. Yes, I know. Actual tax.

I’m mortified to have to pay 50%! [While] I use the NHS, I can’t use public transport any more. Trains are always late, most state schools are shit, and I’ve gotta give you, like, four million quid – are you having a laugh? When I got my tax bill in from [the album] 19, I was ready to go and buy a gun and randomly open fire.

I’ve been thinking about what we can all do to help. It must be really hard as a 23-year-old, plucked from obscurity and having number-one albums all over the world, to have to pay tax. Maybe we can all have a whip-round and help her.

Let’s of course ignore the fact no-one in the UK pays 50%, because the 50% band only affects income over ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY FUCKING THOUSAND POUNDS. (You pay less on earnings under that amount.) Also, let’s ignore her tax bill being less than her net income for working on one album, meaning she’s made more from that than many indie bands will make during their ENTIRE FUCKING CAREERS.

Good grief, Adele, way to endear yourself to your audience. I bet most people and certainly most musicians would be jumping for joy if they could get a four-million quid tax bill for a year or so’s work, because it’d mean they’d received income to keep of more than four million pounds, you spoiled brat.

Nicely spotted by Charles Arthur at The Guardian. Dell’s new XPS-15 marketing has caught the eye of a lot of websites, which have parroted Dell’s claim, without bothering to investigate it. That claim:

Finally, the power you crave in the thinnest 15″ PC on the planet*.

Charles Arthur:

Wow, the thinnest? But wait, what’s the asterisk?

Small print time: “Based on Dell internal analysis as at February 2011. Based on a thickness comparison (front and rear measurements) of other 15″ laptop PCs manufactured by HP, Acer, Toshiba, Asus, Lenovo, Samsung, Sony, MSI. No comparison made with Apple or other manufacturers not listed.”

Classy stuff, Dell. Still, as we all know, Michael Dell is the best CEO on the planet*

* Based on ignoring quite a few other CEOs who, quite clearly, are better than Dell, but, hey, is that really important anyway? Can’t we all just get along, even if companies are lying through their teeth in making misleading advertising claims that are objective and can therefore be checked against actual facts, rather than sensibly making more subjective statements? Actually, no, because Dell is a pillock.

A great piece from Ars Technica’s Chris Foresman on openness advocates Google now blocking rooted Android devices from its new movie-rental service. You know, those devices people rooted to remove all the crap carriers bundle, to ‘add value’, which is a benefit of Android being ‘open’?

But it serves as yet another example that Android’s openness only extends as far as it benefits Google.

I’m wondering when people will get the hint about this. Everyone whinges about Apple’s walled garden, but it’s pretty clear Google just has a different kind of wall, and one it’s sneakily putting up a brick at a time, hoping no-one’s watching. There is one big difference with Apple, though, as Harry Marks says:

Where’s the outrage? Where are the riots? Where’s the media sensationalisation?

Where indeed? I guess, for some reason that isn’t entirely clear to me, while Apple blocking jailbroken iOS devices from iBooks is evil, Google blocking rooted Android devices from movie rentals is a-OK.

I’ve been banging on of late about Twitter’s boneheaded thinking regarding developers. Short version: Ryan Sarver, who heads up Twitter’s platform team, tells people to stop making Twitter clients, because:

With more people joining Twitter and accessing the service in multiple ways, a consistent user experience is more crucial than ever.

Twitter then starts making life difficult for devs by screwing around with how logins work, except for in their own clients, obviously, (which Twitter claims are part of the service, so THAT’S ALL RIGHT, THEN).

Reports are now coming in from all over that Twitter has bought TweetDeck (CNet). I personally can’t stand TweetDeck, but I know a lot of people who use it, and if third-party clients were all shot in the head, TweetDeck’s death would cause the biggest uproar. Therefore, it’s going to be extremely interesting to see what Twitter does next.

Conceivably, it could kill TweetDeck, but that makes no sense. Even if the purchase was made defensively, to stop TweetDeck becoming a client for a rival service, too many Twitter users work with TweetDeck to make the app disappear. Twitter could roll the column and multi-account-post functionality into its own clients, perhaps as an ‘advanced’ option, but that doesn’t sit right with the, frankly, bare-bones nature of Twitter’s official clients.

The only sensible course of action is for Twitter to continue allowing TweetDeck to exist, but then that makes a mockery of Sarver’s statement about consistency (although as Steve Lyb has noted, Twitter’s doing perfectly well on its own in that regard). Still, given the ‘one rule for us, and another for everyone else, which largely involves PUNCHING DEVS IN THE FACE UNTIL THEY GET THE HINT AND BUGGER OFF’ mindset Twitter apparently employs these days, that last option wouldn’t surprise me at all.