Personal Data Industry: The New Tobacco?
Posted: 01 December 2021
Data it has often been said, is the new oil. The analogy has merits. It’s a new source of economic power. They both involve extraction and refinement. Both can be used to create many new and useful products. But whereas oil is extracted from the earth, data comes comes from many sources, and notably two types. We have impersonal data from systems, machines, documents, and the list goes on; hence the term Internet of Things. The second source is about you; your behaviour, words, photos, sentiments, expressions, movement and to cap it all your DNA. We call this personal data. If we chose to call impersonal data the new oil, what do we call personal data? Let’s call it the new tobacco. Like tobacco it’s unhealthy as sold and used.
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How Microsoft Sucks People In
Posted: 29 November 2021
At Mojeek we believe that consumers and businesses should have freedom to choose. With that freedom healthy and fair competition flourishes, and we all benefit. This is why we stand together with other challengers to Microsoft in a “Coalition for a Level Playing Field”; a new group at launch of 26 European IT businesses and 4 NGOs/Industry Bodies. Together we call on the EU and governments to support choice and competition for consumers, by taking action against Microsoft to level the playing field.
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How to Use the Mojeek Calculator
Posted: 23 November 2021
As part of our continuous improvement of Mojeek and its functions, we have recently added a calculator feature as part of the search engine. This calculator provides both simple and advanced mathematical functions in an easy-to-use way. The calculator can undertake basic calculations such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division; whilst also allowing for scientific operations such as trigonometric, logarithmic and exponential functions.
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A New Coalition for Competitive Digital Markets
Posted: 26 October 2021
In May 2021, Margrethe Vestager, the European Commission Executive Vice-President spoke about Europe's digital future and the need for the Digital Markets Act (DMA). She summarised with: "If we’re unhappy with one supermarket, we can just cross the street and go to another. It should be the same online. We work so that #BigTech can not lock us inside their world, and we can keep our choices open." There are smaller innovative companies that, like Mojeek, offer alternative business models and services. We have thus joined a new coalition of progressive technology companies who together call on the EU to carefully consider how it legislates for stronger rules on interoperability, bundling, and defaults in the DMA.
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In Defence of Online Anonymity
Posted: 25 October 2021
There is a prevalent perception, notably by those with power and celebrity status, that anonymity causes online abuse. Added to which, too many of today's societal problems are attributed to social media. An end to anonymity is usually accompanied by emotional arguments that focus only on the negatives. Most of the reports, lobbying, and reactions focus on the alleged harms of online anonymity. In this article, we present the counterargument.
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Mojeek Preference Settings: Language and Location
Posted: 06 October 2021
Mojeek helps you find useful destinations, information and answers to questions on the Web. Like any tool, there are always ways to use it better. This series of "How To" articles shows how you can tailor your Mojeek experience, so that you get the kind of results you’re looking for. In this first article we will look at how to change your location and language settings.
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Multiple Choice in Search
Posted: 16 September 2021
Once upon a time search was a web service relatively independent of browsers. We nudged ourselves to switch between web-sites offering search. Then Google came along with their brilliant and simple web search service. They cleverly nudged us into new habits. And like every empire they built defensive walls; most obviously with the Chrome browser, then Android. With Chrome they changed habits and made the browser URL box also the search box. You probably thought that was very convenient. It was, but it was also slight of hand; aka nudge.
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Smartphone Sovereignty
Posted: 11 August 2021
Last week Apple announced that it would soon roll out CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material) photo detection on iCloud Photos, with the capability to do this on the mobile devices in the future. The stated objective is the unarguable and well-meaning objective of tackling child porn sexual abuse problems. Nevertheless this sudden, surprising announcement was met with a great deal of concern from privacy campaigners, organisations, academics, security experts and lawyers. Many people, and notably world experts, see the backdoor that this opens to mobile devices as a slippery slope towards distributed surveillance.
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