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TLDR 170

Too Long; Didn't Read Issue 170

Published: 2018-10-20 • 📧 Newsletter

Welcome to Issue 170. Sharpen your saw.

TL;DR is a weekly review of things that I think you should be reading. A primer of some of the cool things that happened…but you may have missed.

This week I created the following:

Dispositions in the digital domain: Reader, text, and activity in online environments - This week I applied for a small, internal grant. The work will help with some work I'm starting up with social network analysis. I'm also looking to fund the purchase of two years of web hosting for ten educators from K-12 and up into higher ed. I'd like to help them build a domain of one's own…and scaffold their use of IndieWeb.

🔖 Key Takeaways

📺 Watch

This crazy video is completely fake. Yet it's been watched 14 million times on Facebook—including by me. Here's why fake news is still a thriving business.

The economics of viral misinformation are simple: Engagement drives revenue regardless of truth. Fake content optimized for emotional response outperforms accurate journalism. Platform algorithms can't distinguish between genuine engagement and manipulation-driven clicks. Until business models prioritize truth over engagement, fake news remains profitable despite fact-checking efforts.

📚 Read

Chris Gilliard in Real Life Magazine about how surveillance capitalism turns a profit by making people more comfortable with discrimination.

The end game of a surveillance society, from the perspective of those being watched, is to be subjected to whims of black-boxed code extended to the navigation of spaces, which are systematically stripped of important social and cultural clues. The personalized surveillance tech, meanwhile, will not make people less racist; it will make them more comfortable and protected in their racism.

Gilliard identifies how algorithmic systems enable digital redlining—discriminatory practices justified by data rather than explicit racism. When algorithms trained on biased data produce discriminatory outcomes, people treat those outcomes as objective rather than questioning the embedded bias. Surveillance capitalism profits from this by selling targeted discrimination as personalization, making structural inequality feel like individual preference.

The History of the Future of High School

Audrey Watters in VICE Magazine's Power and Privilege Issue.

The problem with American high school education, it seems, is not that students haven't learned the "right skills." The problem is that the systemic inequality of the school system has ensured that many students have been unable to participate fully in either the economy or, more fundamentally, in democracy. It's not that there has been no tinkering, but that those doing the tinkering often have their own interests, rather than students' interests, in mind.

Watters exposes how century of high school reform rhetoric focuses on skills and workforce preparation while ignoring that schools systematically exclude students from democratic participation. Reformers—whether tech billionaires, policy makers, or corporate interests—frame problems to justify their preferred solutions rather than addressing structural inequality that prevents full citizenship for marginalized students.

Kelsey Piper at Vox.

In other words, early childhood education may change children's lives not by teaching them things they'll retain in elementary school, but simply by being in a safe, predictable, and consistent environment for them to play in—and by providing their parents with the stability to get and keep better jobs.

ECE research shows benefits come from stability and safety not academic content retention. This challenges school-readiness narratives that justify ECE funding through later test scores. If ECE works by supporting families and providing consistent environments, we should design and fund programs accordingly rather than pushing academic instruction downward.

Cathleen O'Grady in ArsTechnica about games, aggression, and attention—the evidence on digital media and minds. Some tentative links are in place, but many crucial details are fuzzy.

Research on screen time effects remains surprisingly inconclusive despite widespread anxiety. Tentative correlations exist between heavy use and various outcomes, but causation remains unclear, effect sizes are small, and mechanisms are poorly understood. The gap between confident policy recommendations and actual evidence quality should give us pause about moral panic responses.

Donna Ferguson in The Guardian. For author Matt Haig, children's fiction provides a non-threatening way for children to reflect on their lives in a place no one else can reach: their own heads.

Imagination is the flipside of anxiety. Obviously if you're anxious, you're imagining stuff all the time. You need to fill that imaginative space with positive, fun, nourishing stuff and books can give you that. Through fiction, you can escape into a world that isn't your life, but can help you to deal with it. And that applies as much to a seven-year-old as it does to a 70-year-old.

Haig's observation reveals picture books as mental health tools by providing imaginative alternatives to anxious rumination. If anxiety is imagination turned toward catastrophe, fiction offers imagination directed toward possibility and meaning-making. Books can't solve mental health crises alone but they provide accessible entry points for children to process experiences and build emotional vocabulary.

🔨 Do

I ordered a YubiKey 4 for $10.00 after subscribing to a year of Wired. This price is a lot cheaper than simply ordering one online. Alternatively, follow the guide provided above to make your own…using a USB key you already have.

Once it gets here, I'll have a series of posts on my experiences setting up stronger security for all of my accounts and passwords.

Hardware security keys provide phishing-resistant two-factor authentication. Unlike SMS codes or authenticator apps that can be compromised, physical keys require possession of the device. This dramatically reduces account takeover risk and aligns with assume-you'll-be-hacked security posture from previous issues.

🤔 Consider

"Turn your actions into concentrated practices." — Belzebuub

This issue's theme of sharpening your saw calls for turning scattered efforts into deliberate practice. Recognizing fake news patterns becomes concentrated media literacy. Understanding algorithmic discrimination becomes sustained advocacy for transparency. Supporting early childhood through stability not academic pressure becomes policy work. Managing screen time with unclear evidence becomes thoughtful experimentation rather than moral panic. Each action gains power through intentional repetition and refinement rather than random response to crisis.

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Part of the 📧 Newsletter archive documenting digital literacy and technology.