There’s been something really unsettling about Facebook for a long time now, in its response towards images portraying violence against women. That such posts end up on the site isn’t the problem—because that’s always going to happen on a network of Facebook’s size—nor is semi-randomly assigned adverts being placed on these pages. The problem is Facebook’s reaction when images and posts are flagged by the community. To date, the company has generally said it has to balance the right to free speech and offence; by contrast, pictures of breastfeeding are removed as a matter of routine.

Women, Action & the Media decided to take action, and started hitting Facebook where it hurts: in the bank account. Its campaign targeted advertisers rather than Facebook, and although many companies weaselled out of doing anything, some big names pulled ads, including Nissan UK and Nationwide UK. As WAM! has reported, Facebook has finally listened and posted a statement, Controversial, Harmful and Hateful Speech on Facebook.

It’s great to see WAM!’s success and also that Facebook is now finally responding, albeit after a bunch of companies pulled ads rather than beforehand. However, the Facebook statement was quite telling in how the network viewed discrimination:

Many different groups which have historically faced discrimination in society, including representatives from the Jewish, Muslim, and LGBT communities, have reached out to us in the past to help us understand the threatening nature of content, and we are grateful for the thoughtful and constructive feedback we have received. […]

Facebook’s mission has always been to make the world more open and connected. […] To facilitate this goal, we also work hard to make our platform a safe and respectful place for sharing and connection. This requires us to make difficult decisions and balance concerns about free expression and community respect. We prohibit content deemed to be directly harmful, but allow content that is offensive or controversial.

The conclusion there has generally been the case with Facebook, but, for some reason, not with women. There are countless examples of rape ‘jokes’ coupled with horrific imagery that have been deemed acceptable by Facebook moderators and admin staff, even when flagged as unacceptable by hundreds of people. In some cases, these images have even been direct threats against individuals, including photographs altered to show someone with serious injuries. Again, by contrast, a picture of a breastfeeding woman is typically immediately banned, presumably because that is “directly harmful” somehow rather than “offensive or controversial”.

And yet the statement then directly contradicts Facebook’s own actions:

We define harmful content as anything organizing real world violence, theft, or property destruction, or that directly inflicts emotional distress on a specific private individual (e.g. bullying).

If that’s the case, why have so many images—including those targeting individuals—been allowed to stand, or at least been left online until literally many hundreds of people have complained about them? It shouldn’t take a social networking campaign to get a social network to remove a disgusting, bullying, hugely offensive, threatening image.

Facebook’s statement at least admits that its

systems to identify and remove hate speech have failed to work as effectively as we would like, particularly around issues of gender-based hate.

The network says it needs to do better. It will therefore review and update guidelines its team uses to evaluate reports of violations of its community standards around hate speech, integrating advice from representatives of the women’s coalition and other groups that have historically faced discrimination. Training will be updated, and those creating content will be held accountable, although I’m not sure some people will care if they’re forced to use their real identities to post hate.

Still, it’s a start, and perhaps it’s the beginnings of the network finally dealing with problems that should have been dealt with long ago.

Sometimes I feel the need to repeatedly refresh a browser, in the hope that what I’m reading is actually some kind of weird bug that’s coincidentally fashioned a bunch of words before my eyes into a festering pile of stupid. That’s  pretty much what happened when I saw Google Glass vs. Apple iWatch: How Do They Compare?, written by Greg Roberts for ReadWrite.

My answer to the above would be a much shorter article than Roberts has penned:

I’ve no idea, largely on the basis that no-one knows whether an Apple iWatch actually exists, and hardly anyone’s had a go on Google Glass.

The thing is, that’s not the kind of article that gets eyeballs. What you instead need to do is fire up the speculation engine, and splatter its turd fuel all over the internet.

To his credit, Roberts does at least seem to have an inkling of how ridiculous his article is going to be, and says:

Sure, the battle is a little lopsided in that Google Glass is a real product, albeit still for developers only, while iWatch remains only speculation.

The end!

But no; instead, he continues:

But let’s assume that both will be real products soon enough and look at their individual strengths and weaknesses.

How about let’s not assume both will be real products soon enough. And let’s not look at their individual strengths and weaknesses, because no-one has any bloody idea what an iWatch’s might be, BECAUSE IT DOESN’T EXIST YET.

Face vs. Wrist

Facepalm vs. Chinese burn.

The wrist is an easy target, as it has been the home of technological advancements from the beginning of the wristwatch era, c. 1920 and peaking during the digital watch revolution in the 1970s. Many people are used to wearing technology on their wrists.

OH GOD I THINK MY BRAIN JUST MELTED AND I CAN’T TAKE ANY MORE.

*sterlingeffort*

Google Glass, however, doesn’t just shift the location of the phone screen: instead it offers a completely new computing paradigm.

BUZZWORD BINGO HOUSE!

And then, instead of comparing something that doesn’t exist with something that barely does, Roberts essentially writes the following:

Google Glass! SQUEEEE! I love Google Glass. Google Glass looks super-awesome. Google Glass is amazing! Have you noticed how much I like Google Glass, because I really like Google Glass? I’m not actually going to state whether I’ve used Google Glass yet, but, man, GOOGLE GLASS. It’s just… GOOGLE GLASS! GOOGLE! GLASS!

And people wonder why the vast majority of tech journalism is a train wreck.

Here we go again. Microsoft does love its defensive comparison charts, and it’s unveiled another, pitting the iPad against a range of Windows 8 tablets. As you might expect, it’s just a tiny bit biased and the slightest bit sneaky with some comparisons. For example, the iPad loses out in terms of display size, but, for some reason, resolution is never mentioned.

When comparing against the HP Envy, the iPad has a “$69 sold separately keyboard” —the horror! And, of course, that’s the only keyboard that works with the iPad. The end. But wait! When you compare against any of the other tablets, the keyboard comparison magically disappears! It’s almost like Microsoft doesn’t want to admit that keyboards aren’t in fact included by default with Windows 8 tablet devices!

Elsewhere, we have the usual blah blah blah about the iPad not having a million ports, not printing to “most printers” (despite AirPrint printers now being absurdly cheap and readily available), and not having Office. I’ve written about Office and Microsoft’s current direction with it before, and the new comparison chart helpfully notes:

The only consumer Office app the iPad can run is OneNote.

Perhaps Microsoft really is going to silo Office and make it a USP for its tablets, in which case, it’s going to look pretty stupid. (Teaching people Office isn’t ubiquitous is a really bad idea.) Alternatively, Office might eventually show up for iPad, at which point these comparisons will be moot, and Microsoft is going to look pretty stupid. It’s like the company’s surrounded by a sea of stupid, but rather than building a raft, it’s just drinking down the stupid.

Fortunately, Microsoft then has a minor brainwave and presents two comparisons about things that are genuinely useful. Multiple accounts are something the iPad doesn’t allow (Apple would rather you buy separate devices for you, each member of your family and, preferably, even for your pets), and it really should, at least for ‘guests’ or to provide parents with more control over what children can access. And then there’s “seeing two apps at once”, which I’m sure is something at least some iPad power users would love.

Unfortunately, Microsoft then saw fit to release the toe-curlingly embarrassing Windows 8: Less talking, more doing advert. It ‘hilariously’ has Siri saying what the iPad can’t do, and I’m sure someone important at Microsoft was thinking how great the advert was. After all, it shows how the iPad doesn’t have live tiles, “can only do one thing at a time”, can’t do PowerPoint, and then ends with

Should we just play Chopsticks?

Oooh, burn!

The teeny tiny snag is, it’s easy to spin most of that in another direction:

• Man, that Windows 8 thing is a huge, noisy, garbled mess on the start screen, compared to the clean nature of iOS!
• Hang on, the iPad can speak to you? That sounds pretty great! Hey, why’s the Windows tablet silent?
• Microsoft’s proprietary formats are a really bad idea, aren’t they? Still, I bet there are some alternate Office-compatible apps for iPad, right?
• Hey, that piano app looks great. What, it’s GarageBand and costs only five bucks? Man, I’d love that. So where’s the Windows 8 version? Oh. *buys iPad*

In short, then: Microsoft says Windows 8 is amazing because it’s noisier, has split-screen and can run PowerPoint, but it can’t speak, and if you’re into music, you’re not ‘doing’—you’re just some kind of idiot who should really be making a presentation on a cheap piece of tablet hardware.

That’s Apple told.

Sometimes you read something on a blog that’s like a punch to the gut:

I don’t know exactly how much Bombcats needed to make to keep Radiangames in business, but these numbers aren’t close.

That’s a comment from Radian Games, in reality indie dev Luke Schneider. He recently released Bombcats, which has enjoyed plenty of downloads, but IAP conversion of around 0.1 per cent. On one day he mentions, he states 100,000 downloads resulted in a couple of hundred bucks in income—figures likely to drop as the game fades from view over time.

I had no idea Schneider was on his last throw of the dice, but it’s doubly sad to see him being generous about IAP (the game isn’t pushy and provides plenty of content for nothing) and then finding out that this method doesn’t work.

I wrote about the pros and cons of freemium/free-to-play/IAP on iOS recently. Every developer I spoke to said the same things:

• IAP in and of itself is not a bad system, and can actually be beneficial in providing income over time that can be reinvested in a title’s development and/or new projects.
• IAP has a somewhat poor reputation because it’s too often exploited.
• IAP can fail if you are not aggressive enough.

You can see the disconnect. In order to create a good user experience, you’re better off being generous; but in order to survive, you have to be a bastard. There are exceptions—Hero Academy comes to mind—but for the most part, those IAP titles that thrive are the ones nickel-and-diming you at every turn.

It’s also pretty depressing to see the comments in the Radian Games post. Some people say they won’t even try the game purely because it’s free-to-play, and, well, that never means free. That’s sort of how I used to think, but a comment by indie Ste Pickford sums up why I changed my tune long ago:

I think the move to digital distribution meant that a drift towards a purchase of price of zero was inevitable (as the ‘cost of goods’ is effectively zero), so now we’re here on iOS we might as well get on with working out how to make good games—and make a living—within this landscape, rather than clinging to the old business model.

Following on from that, gamers also have to understand these changing business models and support those developers embracing IAP if they’re going about it the right way. People who loved Punch Quest should have thought “Wow, this is amazing—I’ll fling the dev a few bucks just because”, rather than “Wow, this is amazing AND free—WOOOO!” The thing is, as Alan Downie recently wrote, customers won’t give you money unless you ask, and in iOS gaming, it seems you really have to ask rather hard.

I hope there’s a balance to be found. I hope the future of gaming isn’t developers increasingly getting consultants in from the gambling industry (yes, this is happening, and, no, it’s not a good thing) rather than simply creating great games. I hope that, somehow, Apple will one day embrace making smaller games more discoverable rather than so often flagging games that are guaranteed hits already. Right now, despite some devs finding they can’t survive the iOS lottery, there are still fantastic titles arriving by the day, but the manner in which aggression is becoming a requirement makes me uncomfortable and concerned for the future of what’s otherwise an amazing gaming platform.

It’s at this point I wish I were a Daring Fireball or The Loop, with the kind of readership that could make a difference. I could say go and buy Inferno+ (Robotron meets Gauntlet in neon) and Slydris (futuristic well-based block-falling puzzler), two of Radian’s best titles (for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad). I could say fling a few bucks at Bombcats, knowing that it could change the course of events. But my readership is small and so I’m effectively powerless; I can only imagine how the likes of Schneider feel.

Still, go and buy those games anyway, because you never know and—most importantly—they’re really very good indeed.

Back in 2012, I interviewed for .net magazine a chap by the name of Dalton Caldwell. He was a man with a plan, with the aim to create a realtime feed platform that would become “what Twitter could have been”.

Now, I like ‘Twitter the service’ an awful lot, but ‘Twitter the company’ makes me edgy. It’s very developer hostile when it comes to clients, and it’s also well on its way to becoming a platform for pushing advertising. I very much hope it doesn’t become the mess that Facebook is these days, but Twitter’s customers are increasingly businesses, not you, the user.

Caldwell’s App.Net takes a different stance. Although in a sense broadly similar to Twitter (you post, follow, repost, ‘star’, and so on), it’s based around paid tiers of membership (one for developers, and one for everyone else). This means the users are the customers, and it also keeps out spam. (Say ‘iPad’ on Twitter at your peril; say it on App.Net whenever you like. Hell, say it often, just because you can—until people start asking if you’ve been hollowed out and replaced by an Apple advertising robot.) It’s also, in my experience, resulted in a quieter but clearly content and happy community.

There’s also a free tier, which at the time of writing requires an invite from a paying member, and that also has some limitations, such as the number of people you can follow. Possibly because I’m a journalist a reasonable number of people follow, but probably more likely because I in my press photo look a bit like Seth MacFarlane, App.Net have given me a pile of invites to the service. So if you’d like to join me on App.Net, get your free invitation here, while stocks last.

If you’d like to know more about the service, read Matt Gemmell’s excellent post, which explores account discovery and the clients available for a range of platforms.