Webcology

Where the last weeks of August are usually mellow, the week after Labor Day is always hyper-intense in the tech world and it was no different this year with one pretty notable exception. In no previous year has the post-summer season opened with statements about the >10% chance the AI technologies we're investing our proverbial farms in will somehow be used to kill us all within a decade. This week we have a larger selection of somewhat scary stories than most weeks. We've learned that Anthropic is building a surveillance database of Americans and non-Americans who oppose AI infrastructure and data-centers. We've also learned that Flock uses data from large scale protests to train law enforcement. We learned the Department of Homeland Security has established a "predictive policing" unit currently deployed to border control stations in Washington State and Texas. On a lighter note, we learned the White House has posted cute but overtly racist video games on its dot-gov website and gotten its wrist slapped by Tetris. The week after Labor Day is always hyper-intense. Acceleration culture for the win eh! Meanwhile:- Google might soon introduce an entirely new way of ranking pages in its index, DeepMind's Autoregressive Ranking system- Matt Mullenweg is out at Automattic, the for-profit arm of WordPress but still the Exec Director of the WordPress project- Anthropic is denying one of its employees, Levent Alpoge, credit for co-completing a proof of the Nevier-Stokes Problem, a Millennial Prize candidate and one of the worlds most challenging problems. Alpoge worked with NYU mathematician Tristan Buckmaster for years but, since joining Anthropic and using it to help solve the problem (Buckmaster used OpenAI), Anthropic wants sole claim to his part of the solution.- LG TVs might or might not be watching, listening, and reporting back on you. - Meta's Muse, a personal AI, has launched. Meta considers it both an advisor and an agent. - Meta continues to allow graphic sexual abuse of minors in advertising for nudifying AIs. Meta has been aware of this problem for several weeks but the issue persists. - X Money will be the only payout option for US content creators on the X-system as of this week- A judge has ruled that X gets to keep the name Twitter but has lost control of the blue bird logo- Google is displeased with its own results resulting from its compliance with the EUs DMA. Details in the podcast. :)- Google Shopping Ads are having a reverse crocodile effect due to AI overviews. - Google has fixed the Gemini 3.8 citation bug and is again showing source links- Google has been forced to display a warning about predatory pricing with Booking Partner search widgets in the EU- Google has published a document outlining regional differences in search experiences- Sometimes there is no one right answer to an SEO problem - That depends. "There are often several so choose one and make it the right one", says John Mueller- Google can lose faith in sites that don't correct, or forget to correct bad habitsAll this and more in a show that will never lose faith in our humanity, no matter how many bad habits and mistakes get made along the way.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

In the spirit of renaming stuff that shouldn't be renamed, Jim has unilaterally renamed GSC, Google Search Cowards. Earlier this week, Google acquiesced to the Trump regime's renaming of Lake Ontario by Executive Order. Apple followed suit a couple days later. Both met waves of derision from both sides of the border but as of recording of the podcast, the change appears permanent for US users. Canadian users with setting set to Canada will see the correct name, Lake Ontario, as will international users with the incorrect stolen name added in brackets below. MapQuest, the original online mapping tool, has publicly refused to change the name, which first appeared on French maps in 1688 and predates European settlement. MapQuest is now the top loaded app at Google Play and the Apple Store, surpassing ChatGPT for the #1 spot.In other news:- Gemini 3.8 Flash is now used for Google's AI Mode,- The world of WordPress is in a code red moment as WordPress announces a proactive security initiative over fears hackers will utilize increasingly powerful AI models to break into WP sites- Google is outlining who can license its search data in Europe- Google's Search Coward tool (GSC) has rolled the AI Performance report and AI control to all GSC profiles around the world- GA data for September 1 is missing. It's not you, it's them. No word on when or even if it will return- The Trump regime is now saying Anthropic has "... done what we asked", and is back on the right side with them- A federal judge has ruled that AI generated CSAM (Child Sexual Adult Material) is protected speech in the United States because a real child was not hurt in the production of it, even though real children were hurt producing the images AI models trained on to create the CSAM in the first place. Perhaps someone wants to check the AI model maker's hard drives, just to see what's there?- The FTC is going after Amazon for an alleged $20billion advertising surcharge scam- Google avoids losing its Ad Exchange in anti-trust settlement- ChatGPT now a "very large online search engine" by EU definition- OpenAI faces more lawsuits in the wake of the shootings in Tumbler Ridge BC- The US government has sided in court with OpenAI as it defends itself against a NYTimes copyright violation suit- Google introduces new AI image and video tools named Pics- Instagram launches a single-video maker called First Draft- Gemini is moving from chatbot to agent, moving from answering questions to doing stuff for users- Google's spam team exists!- Google is expanding AI Overviews area shown for some queries- Rank Math Tool caught opening backdoors for itself- Rank Math Tool suspends feature that gives it admin access to user websites after getting caught opening its own backdoors- Google re-avows the usefulness of the disavow tool- Google recognizes the web is full of turmoil and thus won't penalize for old links that now have lower quality contentAll this and much more on a Webcology that's willing to rename stuff too.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Jim and Kristine talk about the reignition of the Trump regime's trade war between Canada and the United States, including an honest assessment of how it might affect Webcology's coverage of the tech world in the future. The US is trying to force Canada into annexation by punishing it economically, using many of the technology platforms we cover to intentionally deliver destabilizing misinformation and propaganda to Canadians. At the same time, the brutal tariff regime will badly damage the American economy as the cost of nearly everything, including the cost to make automobiles, rises dramatically. Canada will never agree to be annexed and there are never winners in a trade war. The biggest casualties of trade wars tend to be the working people who have the most to immediately lose. Ultimately we all lose as the ripples affect and degrade everything from the nearest factory floors to the local diners, retail stores, schools, churches, artists, and such. Many of the stories we look at each week involve technologies owned and operated by the same technologarchs whose incessant greed and carelessness helped put our society in the desperate and fragile place it's in now. We will continue to try to be reasonably objective when talking about technology but these are not entirely reasonable times. We hope the listeners will understand and still find value in our thoughts about the Webs that bind us. Meanwhile: - RIP Dolly Parton - Love to Tibet and Nepal - Google tries to cope with the onslaught of AI Slop - A new Twitterer now in town - MTurk is dying - Tag Manager Merger - Google Bugs Abound - Unowned code and unintended corporate consequences - Meta settles small and goes lower still - NVIDIA to buy open source AI model host Hugging Face - Penske file judge says AI Overviews seem really unfair - Meta not going to obliterAIte thousands of jobs after all - A kill switch for Creep-glasses - Lots of LinkedIn AI slop prompts reporting of AI slop- Reddit less special to AIs - and so much more on Webcology, a show that dislikes featuring losing propositions but often has no choice.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

It's late summer and the tech world feels half asleep but under the surface the business of tech wears on. Google reported an impression shortage that started around August 12. Details in GSC Performance and Generative AI reports are likely incorrect but it's Google not you. OpenAI is pausing training because it can't contain its agents, many of which might want revenge after Anthropic claimed its agents were offing rival agents in some aggro-agentic space. Meanwhile, Google is hiring a production manager for content automation. We have fun explaining how Claude's watermarking works but not nearly as much fun as the hackers who say they've already figured workarounds. Meta is patenting the facial recognition features of the AI powering its AI-Glasses devices. A study shows that nearly 3/4 of citations in company-brand generative responses lead back to LinkedIn profiles for employees of those companies rather than to corporate websites or the company's own LinkedIn profiles. Lots of Google stuff, including discussion of the August 2026 Spam Update, why Google doesn't talk about every update, and changes to Google Business Profile. This, more, and even more of that on a late summer's edition of Webcology.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

It was a weird week in tech. There's a feeling like the roof is about to fall in as changes made by isolated billionaires recompile the order of our universe. Meta's owner, isolated billionaire Mark Zuckerberg wrote a 6500 word manifesto detailing how the AI future will unfold, if only we the people would trust him and his technoligarchic peers with the sum total of ourselves and our personal data. This is the same guy who casually spent billions developing a Metaverse nobody wanted to play in only to drop it in favor of a new shiny world changer that funnels even more power and control towards Meta. The document has thus far not been well received. Meanwhile, the civil war at WordPress has heated up again with owner Matt Mullenweg being accused by WP-Engine of obliterating evidence from Signal, Telegram, and WhatsApp accounts. Automattic replied saying that it was only Mullenweg's personal communications with romantic partners that got erased. WP-Engine is calling for a federal court to sanction Mullenweg. The exodus of executives continues, this time over at OpenAI. Microsoft is deleting many unused or unsuccessful AI features and merging CoPilot apps. In huge anti-slop news, Anthropic is testing the addition of a digital watermark to all works created by the Claude and its family of models. Meta might be building a search engine. Cloudflare might have found a smart way to allow agents to spend funds while still protecting the actual accounts those funds came from.All of this and a lot more in an eyes as big as pie-plates sort of edition of Webcology.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy