Great article as usual. Thanks.. have you given any thought on my previous comment asking if you can help Facebook do something about their current algorithms? Keep up the good work,
The new algorithms, I believe, are a disgrace. For years Facebook has had little interest in what is posted. Now the algorithms are picking up items that should not be removed and I feel that our freedom of speech is being eroded. When a Banksy artwork cannot be posted on a closed Banksy site because it goes against standards of child nudity and sexual exploitation of children our rights are being eroded. This is the artwork https://hexagongallery.com/catalog/artist/banksy/napalm-cant-beat-that-feeling/ I also had a comment deleted because I thanked Daddy G for his charitable support of TEMWA and the Bristol Box Community as he donated two Banksy’s to their auction. This comment was on Massive Attack’s group. Unless someone speaks out against these dangerous rules we end up putting up with freedoms being eroded. I believe that Dominic Cummings has a voice that is louder than most people and I am hoping he will speak out against this. Dom understands these algorithms, how they can be used and people will listen. What should we do shut up and put up with this nonsense, glue ourselves to the M5 or should we encourage discussion about it?
Ah right, so you are looking for a means of policing the Facebook algorithms?
I might be wrong… but I don’t think Dominic Cummings has much interest at all in that. He is mostly interested in studying high performance teams like Apple 2002-09, various tech startups, Manhattan, Apollo, etc. (Interestingly he omits elite team sport a huge area of literature on selecting for ‘better than sum of parts’.)
But DC quirk is “why no such teams control the huge public budgets?”
AI censorship is not really his gig is it?
Also Facebook.com is in it’s sunset years. The company are already focused on replacing it with the Metaverse. The site / app will always be there, but usage is already in terminal decline. They are just squeezing as much juice as then can from the people still using it, and protecting their company (now called ‘Meta’) from antitrust break up.
YouTube are the same stage, the ads will only get more intrusive and the censorship will only increase. These properties are cash cows, but are in terminal decline and this is how their corporate owners will operate them for the next 15-20 years. The audience is captured, so the products will just get more and more monetised and legally protected (censored).
But the next paradigm will be the Wild West again in terms of free speech. It’s a monopolistic space where the winner takes all. So in the growth phase you give society whatever it wants.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/facebook-whistleblower-documents-detail-deep-look-facebook-rcna3580 My point is that they are not giving the public what they want. I have carried out a straw poll throughout my friends and many know of comments that have been deleted. None of them can understand why. I agree wholeheartedly that Facebook is in decline but now I believe that Facebook are speeding this process with their poor use of algorithms. I have great faith in Dom and would like to think that a conversation or a thought process will at least take place.
All they care about is having a huge advertising surface that they can sell. Here they have succeeded. They have captured a billion 5inch screens and they sell that ad space to their customers. Their customers are the advertisers not the public. As a user of the app you are not a Facebook customer, you do not have customer rights with Facebook.
They have calculated that their business is protected by the network effect and that users won't leave their app even if a far superior social app was available. Zuckerburg was the first person to realise this and he has been proven to be correct. Facebook don't need to have a good app any more they won the network monopoly.
On censorship, they are mostly concerned about protecting their monopolistic network effect and not getting broken up, so they censor to avoid any political backlash getting big enough for anti trust measures. They use clumsy AI to do the censorship because of the shear scale of the task. But app users will endure that clumsiness because of the network effect protection that Facebook enjoys.
If you don't like Facebook, don't use it. There are plenty of far better image hosting services on the web. If all your friends agree, as you say, then you can actually defeat the network effect prison and move together to a batter app.
Group migrations are ultimately how Facebook will break down and fail. Just no competitor has figured that out yet. I expect Zuckerburg would aggressively buyout any such startup for a vastly inflated price. That may be the easiest billion dollars that can be made in the world today.
https://www.yourdictionary.com/flagship-product I don’t believe that Facebook’s current use of their algorithms meets the flagship product standards that Facebook is known for. See examples in my comment below.
Arguing over custom checks in Northern Irish ports when there are thousands of third world illegals invading other British ports every. Single. Day 🤦♂️
I sincerely hope Art16 isn’t triggered. I know Commission/ European politicians have been expecting it and are prepped — and Horizon Europe association status would most likely go under the bus at this stage. That in turn would be disastrous for UK science… not in the straight ££ economics terms, but rather in talent attraction, UK reputation, UK’s now traditional leadership/coordination of multinational projects, and UK unis diversifying their physical presences to put footholds around Europe (latter not bad per se - but diversification of collab activity away from UK soil is).
I also can’t see any win for UK govt triggering such wreckage with EU & US and science. It just looks hostile for the sake of it… and weirdly puritanical about ECJ rather than actual business concerns.
Dom, q about 2019. Do you believe that other Tory candidates could have won a similar landslide, I.e. would anyone who said I will finish this Brexit mess have won the same? It’s often said only boris can reach those seats that were won in ‘19
DC is missing the key point: it's not 'violence' that Frost needs to be most worried about. It's the clear and present danger of the political withdrawal of Unionism from the Belfast Agreement that he needs to obviate. And, to be fair to Frost, this is exactly what he is currently seeking to do.
Another point to note is that Johnson is giving Frost full latitude of decision making in the present talks, primarily because Johnson knows that his political fate and future place in history are tied far more closely to Frost than to anyone else in his present or former circles, including Carrie and DC.
Hypothetically, if I had one of those fake pound coins on a key ring, where might I insert it to release the trolley and ride it down the High St. proclaiming myself Lady Godiva? Asking for a friend.
I must say we’d never read this sort of thing in America, no one would believe it - although I believe you.
3 questions.
Any answers are welcome.
Sir (DC) why do you think you’ll get a better PM via elections?
Why don’t you think you’ll get a colorless cipher functionary who will simply surrender to the EU?
What does the other DC, the one in Washington think of Brexit. I doubt they’re on your side. Its not advertised but the EU was always a key globalist project, a man named George Ball had a lot to do with the original EEC after WW2.
I read this blog and I consider myself a sensible person and I consider you Dom to be lucid and forthcoming. But my god… I’m always left thinking “I hope that’s not true”.
Halfway down the page I begin to hope that maybe one of us is a madman. Maybe Dominic Cummings is a fantasist, or maybe I’m just extremely gullible. But I have no evidence of either, only hope.
Anyway…
Are British institutions so strong that we can survive and muddle by even in the absence of strategic vision and competent leadership?
Where is the country even going? Are we really just blowing in the wind? Rudderless, mapless, no oars.
More fundamentally, in a modern democracy can technocrats actually achieve meaningful organisational change? Isn’t there too much inert political capital to carry?
In a startup the founder has special authoritative powers that a subsequent CEO can never replicate. A founder gets to author the lore of the organisation (the origin story), a hired CEO does not have that power and can be resisted and ousted by incumbent staff / boards. Tim Cook could never make a company breaking strategic bet with Apple, in the way that Steve Jobs could and did.
For nation states, you need an extremely dominant and popular leader before you can think about recasting institutions. Someone as big as Putin, Thatcher, de Gaulle, Roosevelt, etc.
Alternatively it has been done with special emergency powers like President Draghi, or GW Bush.
But Boris can’t carry the political capital to get this done. Not even close. And not COVID nor Brexit gave the kind of emergency powers necessary to recast institutions.
That’s why you had so much resistance at every turn, people think Boris won’t last, that they can hang on, sit it out, survive. To modernise Whitehall you need a landslide super majority and a messianic leader or a 9/11 scale emergency (which COVID was not).
In America today the last chance for 'elections' solving anything ended in January when Troops installed a new government. This is fact whether you hated Trump or not.
England may have a chance, but I doubt it's with elections.
In America saving ourselves - which we probably will - a Lincoln will not suffice.
This will take a Mao marching from the ground up all the way sea to shining sea and the other scenarios are fantasy.
The good news for England is with America imploding inward England's chances improve.
Dominic (and Stu) – for anyone fascinated by politics this latest pitch/exposé is a veritable feast and for me at least comes as no great surprise. However, my strong feeling (and I sense also of Stu’s) is that these exchanges are not what this blog you have created is primarily all about.
The deeply embedded protocols in today’s democratic politics, emanating from its historical origins, do not resonate with the present times. Democratic – as politics has to be - in name only and hopelessly flawed in developing and delivering appropriate policy. And as you continue to reveal - highly dependent on the PM.
The capabilities afforded to us courtesy of digital technology and the general level of education and awareness of citizens today obliges us to elevate our thinking as to how to reinvent politics. Until we address this head-on and set this transition in motion, the aspirations we all have to lift society to a new and enlightened era – could all be for nought.
It is blindingly obvious how much you despise our process of government. With this blog and the quality of thinkers attracted to it I believe you just may have catalysed the movement that can change all of this.
Let’s redirect and focus energies to this task. I - and I am sure some other contributors - have ideas on how to bring about fundamental change to the narrative and actuality of UK (and USA) politics that most can buy into. Let’s start a circle of thinkers where this is the main driver. Otherwise there is a grave danger of Fiddling whilst Rome Burns.
Well put Stu - can echo your journey. Watching this all unfold, there is a horrible inevitability about it all. Occasional optimism crushed by the trolley's latest Omigod antics. This will kill business and drive people to suicidal lengths.
My big concern while we hold out on bot triggering A16 is that east <~~> west trade that doesn't happen becomes north <~~> south, weakening our links. I'd love to see a solution without A16 being triggered but given the length of time it's already taken to negotiate a lot of hot air, I don't have high hopes...
I found this article intriguing which is why I have decided to subscribe,so thanks for posting it for 'free'. Politically I always voted Labour until Corbyn became leader, voted 'leave' and then Tory in the last two elections. The PM was the hook, he was different to all other politicians. I think for many new voters that was the case, rather than the party and their policies. My concerns are in respect of our 'public sectors' particularly Health and Social Care both of which I have worked in all of my working life as a clinician and in management. I am dismayed that Sajid Javid was appointed Health Minister he is clearly out of his depth. Review and reform is vital, millions are wasted every year, the level of incompetence amongst senior people working in it is frightening. In fact that together with Whitehall, the endless stream of immigrants across the channel, our education system, our political systems leaves me feeling very afraid for the future of the UK. Who will I vote for at the next election? I have no idea.
One of the problems is that all the most talented people earn >£150,000 in the private sector.
Politics is the domain of wealthy heirs and moderately successful people. Competent people are not attracted to politics. People have an obligation to their children to maximise their income, so taking a job with much lower pay to satisfy some personal ambition isn’t something people do.
Probably the best thing the UK could do is to change MP salary to £500k a year but not starting tomorrow or at the next election, but from the election after that. Give time for political parties and candidates to organise ready to compete with the poor/mediocre incumbents.
The £500k salary isn’t for the current mob of MP’s, it would be there to ensure their replacement.
650 MP’s x £500k is £325m/yr, about £5/capita
Then you would attract lots of very talented and energetic people and the HoC would look more like peoples expectations.
There aren’t 650 excellent politicians in the UK at the £80,000 level. At £80k you mostly get social bluffers, extroverts and people who have the feel of second division soap actors.
You don’t need 650 FTSE100 CEO’s but you do need 10 for the cabinet.
It isn’t too strange that we hear people bemoan the quality of politicians and in the same breath complain that they are overpaid. I think the electorate would be very happy to pay a better set of politicians a lot more, but they don’t feel the current crowd are even worth £80k.
Sadly the quality is also severely lacking in the upper echelons of the private sector. The qualities it takes to be a FTSE100 CEO are more akin to politician than to a person who actually get things done. People who can actually effect change and build systems are attracted to smaller organisations which do not have the bureaucratic overheads that make real change in large organisations so difficult. Ultimately the greatest force of change is destruction - an awful lot of organisations need to be destroyed in order to allow new more effective ones to grow. Money can only solve the problem once the space has been cleared.
Great article as usual. Thanks.. have you given any thought on my previous comment asking if you can help Facebook do something about their current algorithms? Keep up the good work,
What do you mean Katy?
In what possible way could any individual “help” a trillion dollar tech company with their flagship product?
The new algorithms, I believe, are a disgrace. For years Facebook has had little interest in what is posted. Now the algorithms are picking up items that should not be removed and I feel that our freedom of speech is being eroded. When a Banksy artwork cannot be posted on a closed Banksy site because it goes against standards of child nudity and sexual exploitation of children our rights are being eroded. This is the artwork https://hexagongallery.com/catalog/artist/banksy/napalm-cant-beat-that-feeling/ I also had a comment deleted because I thanked Daddy G for his charitable support of TEMWA and the Bristol Box Community as he donated two Banksy’s to their auction. This comment was on Massive Attack’s group. Unless someone speaks out against these dangerous rules we end up putting up with freedoms being eroded. I believe that Dominic Cummings has a voice that is louder than most people and I am hoping he will speak out against this. Dom understands these algorithms, how they can be used and people will listen. What should we do shut up and put up with this nonsense, glue ourselves to the M5 or should we encourage discussion about it?
Ah right, so you are looking for a means of policing the Facebook algorithms?
I might be wrong… but I don’t think Dominic Cummings has much interest at all in that. He is mostly interested in studying high performance teams like Apple 2002-09, various tech startups, Manhattan, Apollo, etc. (Interestingly he omits elite team sport a huge area of literature on selecting for ‘better than sum of parts’.)
But DC quirk is “why no such teams control the huge public budgets?”
AI censorship is not really his gig is it?
Also Facebook.com is in it’s sunset years. The company are already focused on replacing it with the Metaverse. The site / app will always be there, but usage is already in terminal decline. They are just squeezing as much juice as then can from the people still using it, and protecting their company (now called ‘Meta’) from antitrust break up.
YouTube are the same stage, the ads will only get more intrusive and the censorship will only increase. These properties are cash cows, but are in terminal decline and this is how their corporate owners will operate them for the next 15-20 years. The audience is captured, so the products will just get more and more monetised and legally protected (censored).
But the next paradigm will be the Wild West again in terms of free speech. It’s a monopolistic space where the winner takes all. So in the growth phase you give society whatever it wants.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/facebook-whistleblower-documents-detail-deep-look-facebook-rcna3580 My point is that they are not giving the public what they want. I have carried out a straw poll throughout my friends and many know of comments that have been deleted. None of them can understand why. I agree wholeheartedly that Facebook is in decline but now I believe that Facebook are speeding this process with their poor use of algorithms. I have great faith in Dom and would like to think that a conversation or a thought process will at least take place.
All they care about is having a huge advertising surface that they can sell. Here they have succeeded. They have captured a billion 5inch screens and they sell that ad space to their customers. Their customers are the advertisers not the public. As a user of the app you are not a Facebook customer, you do not have customer rights with Facebook.
They have calculated that their business is protected by the network effect and that users won't leave their app even if a far superior social app was available. Zuckerburg was the first person to realise this and he has been proven to be correct. Facebook don't need to have a good app any more they won the network monopoly.
On censorship, they are mostly concerned about protecting their monopolistic network effect and not getting broken up, so they censor to avoid any political backlash getting big enough for anti trust measures. They use clumsy AI to do the censorship because of the shear scale of the task. But app users will endure that clumsiness because of the network effect protection that Facebook enjoys.
If you don't like Facebook, don't use it. There are plenty of far better image hosting services on the web. If all your friends agree, as you say, then you can actually defeat the network effect prison and move together to a batter app.
Group migrations are ultimately how Facebook will break down and fail. Just no competitor has figured that out yet. I expect Zuckerburg would aggressively buyout any such startup for a vastly inflated price. That may be the easiest billion dollars that can be made in the world today.
https://www.yourdictionary.com/flagship-product I don’t believe that Facebook’s current use of their algorithms meets the flagship product standards that Facebook is known for. See examples in my comment below.
Arguing over custom checks in Northern Irish ports when there are thousands of third world illegals invading other British ports every. Single. Day 🤦♂️
Afternoon, who are the Deep State? Thanks
Frightening for us ordinary folk.
Fascinating read and deeply disturbing.
Was there even a back of an envelope plan for the Irish border back in 2016, or was it just deemed too messy to contemplate?
I sincerely hope Art16 isn’t triggered. I know Commission/ European politicians have been expecting it and are prepped — and Horizon Europe association status would most likely go under the bus at this stage. That in turn would be disastrous for UK science… not in the straight ££ economics terms, but rather in talent attraction, UK reputation, UK’s now traditional leadership/coordination of multinational projects, and UK unis diversifying their physical presences to put footholds around Europe (latter not bad per se - but diversification of collab activity away from UK soil is).
I also can’t see any win for UK govt triggering such wreckage with EU & US and science. It just looks hostile for the sake of it… and weirdly puritanical about ECJ rather than actual business concerns.
Dom, q about 2019. Do you believe that other Tory candidates could have won a similar landslide, I.e. would anyone who said I will finish this Brexit mess have won the same? It’s often said only boris can reach those seats that were won in ‘19
Brilliant. PLEASE come back!
DC is missing the key point: it's not 'violence' that Frost needs to be most worried about. It's the clear and present danger of the political withdrawal of Unionism from the Belfast Agreement that he needs to obviate. And, to be fair to Frost, this is exactly what he is currently seeking to do.
Another point to note is that Johnson is giving Frost full latitude of decision making in the present talks, primarily because Johnson knows that his political fate and future place in history are tied far more closely to Frost than to anyone else in his present or former circles, including Carrie and DC.
Hypothetically, if I had one of those fake pound coins on a key ring, where might I insert it to release the trolley and ride it down the High St. proclaiming myself Lady Godiva? Asking for a friend.
Anyway, I hope you are well DC.
Fascinating.
I must say we’d never read this sort of thing in America, no one would believe it - although I believe you.
3 questions.
Any answers are welcome.
Sir (DC) why do you think you’ll get a better PM via elections?
Why don’t you think you’ll get a colorless cipher functionary who will simply surrender to the EU?
What does the other DC, the one in Washington think of Brexit. I doubt they’re on your side. Its not advertised but the EU was always a key globalist project, a man named George Ball had a lot to do with the original EEC after WW2.
I read this blog and I consider myself a sensible person and I consider you Dom to be lucid and forthcoming. But my god… I’m always left thinking “I hope that’s not true”.
Halfway down the page I begin to hope that maybe one of us is a madman. Maybe Dominic Cummings is a fantasist, or maybe I’m just extremely gullible. But I have no evidence of either, only hope.
Anyway…
Are British institutions so strong that we can survive and muddle by even in the absence of strategic vision and competent leadership?
Where is the country even going? Are we really just blowing in the wind? Rudderless, mapless, no oars.
More fundamentally, in a modern democracy can technocrats actually achieve meaningful organisational change? Isn’t there too much inert political capital to carry?
In a startup the founder has special authoritative powers that a subsequent CEO can never replicate. A founder gets to author the lore of the organisation (the origin story), a hired CEO does not have that power and can be resisted and ousted by incumbent staff / boards. Tim Cook could never make a company breaking strategic bet with Apple, in the way that Steve Jobs could and did.
For nation states, you need an extremely dominant and popular leader before you can think about recasting institutions. Someone as big as Putin, Thatcher, de Gaulle, Roosevelt, etc.
Alternatively it has been done with special emergency powers like President Draghi, or GW Bush.
But Boris can’t carry the political capital to get this done. Not even close. And not COVID nor Brexit gave the kind of emergency powers necessary to recast institutions.
That’s why you had so much resistance at every turn, people think Boris won’t last, that they can hang on, sit it out, survive. To modernise Whitehall you need a landslide super majority and a messianic leader or a 9/11 scale emergency (which COVID was not).
Did the window for change ever really open?
In America today the last chance for 'elections' solving anything ended in January when Troops installed a new government. This is fact whether you hated Trump or not.
England may have a chance, but I doubt it's with elections.
In America saving ourselves - which we probably will - a Lincoln will not suffice.
This will take a Mao marching from the ground up all the way sea to shining sea and the other scenarios are fantasy.
The good news for England is with America imploding inward England's chances improve.
Dominic (and Stu) – for anyone fascinated by politics this latest pitch/exposé is a veritable feast and for me at least comes as no great surprise. However, my strong feeling (and I sense also of Stu’s) is that these exchanges are not what this blog you have created is primarily all about.
The deeply embedded protocols in today’s democratic politics, emanating from its historical origins, do not resonate with the present times. Democratic – as politics has to be - in name only and hopelessly flawed in developing and delivering appropriate policy. And as you continue to reveal - highly dependent on the PM.
The capabilities afforded to us courtesy of digital technology and the general level of education and awareness of citizens today obliges us to elevate our thinking as to how to reinvent politics. Until we address this head-on and set this transition in motion, the aspirations we all have to lift society to a new and enlightened era – could all be for nought.
It is blindingly obvious how much you despise our process of government. With this blog and the quality of thinkers attracted to it I believe you just may have catalysed the movement that can change all of this.
Let’s redirect and focus energies to this task. I - and I am sure some other contributors - have ideas on how to bring about fundamental change to the narrative and actuality of UK (and USA) politics that most can buy into. Let’s start a circle of thinkers where this is the main driver. Otherwise there is a grave danger of Fiddling whilst Rome Burns.
Well put Stu - can echo your journey. Watching this all unfold, there is a horrible inevitability about it all. Occasional optimism crushed by the trolley's latest Omigod antics. This will kill business and drive people to suicidal lengths.
My big concern while we hold out on bot triggering A16 is that east <~~> west trade that doesn't happen becomes north <~~> south, weakening our links. I'd love to see a solution without A16 being triggered but given the length of time it's already taken to negotiate a lot of hot air, I don't have high hopes...
I found this article intriguing which is why I have decided to subscribe,so thanks for posting it for 'free'. Politically I always voted Labour until Corbyn became leader, voted 'leave' and then Tory in the last two elections. The PM was the hook, he was different to all other politicians. I think for many new voters that was the case, rather than the party and their policies. My concerns are in respect of our 'public sectors' particularly Health and Social Care both of which I have worked in all of my working life as a clinician and in management. I am dismayed that Sajid Javid was appointed Health Minister he is clearly out of his depth. Review and reform is vital, millions are wasted every year, the level of incompetence amongst senior people working in it is frightening. In fact that together with Whitehall, the endless stream of immigrants across the channel, our education system, our political systems leaves me feeling very afraid for the future of the UK. Who will I vote for at the next election? I have no idea.
Well said. I’m a doc in the NHS as well. Couldn’t agree more.
One of the problems is that all the most talented people earn >£150,000 in the private sector.
Politics is the domain of wealthy heirs and moderately successful people. Competent people are not attracted to politics. People have an obligation to their children to maximise their income, so taking a job with much lower pay to satisfy some personal ambition isn’t something people do.
Probably the best thing the UK could do is to change MP salary to £500k a year but not starting tomorrow or at the next election, but from the election after that. Give time for political parties and candidates to organise ready to compete with the poor/mediocre incumbents.
The £500k salary isn’t for the current mob of MP’s, it would be there to ensure their replacement.
650 MP’s x £500k is £325m/yr, about £5/capita
Then you would attract lots of very talented and energetic people and the HoC would look more like peoples expectations.
There aren’t 650 excellent politicians in the UK at the £80,000 level. At £80k you mostly get social bluffers, extroverts and people who have the feel of second division soap actors.
You don’t need 650 FTSE100 CEO’s but you do need 10 for the cabinet.
It isn’t too strange that we hear people bemoan the quality of politicians and in the same breath complain that they are overpaid. I think the electorate would be very happy to pay a better set of politicians a lot more, but they don’t feel the current crowd are even worth £80k.
Sadly the quality is also severely lacking in the upper echelons of the private sector. The qualities it takes to be a FTSE100 CEO are more akin to politician than to a person who actually get things done. People who can actually effect change and build systems are attracted to smaller organisations which do not have the bureaucratic overheads that make real change in large organisations so difficult. Ultimately the greatest force of change is destruction - an awful lot of organisations need to be destroyed in order to allow new more effective ones to grow. Money can only solve the problem once the space has been cleared.
Compulsiveness, the need for attention and gratification, the need to run away from problems…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immature_personality_disorder