You can’t contract yourself out of breaking the law, Google—that’s not how it...
Google has updated its privacy policy, giving itself carte blanche to take publicly available data to use for its large language models and “AI”. I don’t think whomever wrote the update has any...
View Article‘Fake it till you make it’ isn’t a legal doctrine
Some say, ‘Fake it till you make it,’ as a positive thing. In fact, a very dear friend used to say it, and it did him a lot of good. But then, he’s an honest sort of chap and he never promised...
View ArticleMeta is grabbing your content for its ‘generative AI’—hopefully this opt-out...
Meta (including Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and presumably Whatsapp) is taking user content for its ‘generative AI’. I don’t remember signing up for this, but then I stopped using these sites...
View ArticleGoogle search is worse by design—internal memo
You didn’t imagine it: Google’s search is worse, and that’s by design, according to a document produced in discovery. Dr Jonny L. Saunders of UCLA shared one on their Mastodon earlier today. The...
View ArticleI have business for the photo bots, but they don’t want it
We received a few more automated notices from Copytrack last month, and as usual we were able to show them the licences. However, this one involved one of our editors, and I had to waste her time...
View ArticleHellos and goodbyes
Twenty twenty-three, what a year. I’ve met some amazing people this year, a lot of whom are in the public service. You know who you are. I am happy to know you. Those who champion the good in our...
View ArticleTwenty years of blogging
First up, as I’ve publicly posted this and have helped out myself, my friend and colleague Hasan Abu Afash is in Palestine, and I don’t need to tell you what he and his people are facing. If you can...
View ArticleIs Google stealing your voice for its virtual assistant? Meanwhile, Mktg Stinx
Here’s Google’s latest privacy gaffe, the latest in a long, long line where they pretend to not know it’s happening till they’re embarrassed into admitting that it is happening—and then the authorities...
View ArticleSemrush, LLMs (or “AIs”), and Google: a three-headed misinformation hydra?
It turns out that Semrush is likely responsible for the misinformation regarding my name. When Shahid Jafar first encountered the fake topic of a new Google algorithm named for me—and apparently...
View ArticleMy real expert opinion on Google, SEO, and the mess that’s to come (not the...
Skry being right on the money: Still those web pages about me being a Google SEO expert or having an algorithm named for me are being indexed and prioritized by Google, all because Semrush...
View Article
