Substack Has A Problem

I'm a fan of Substack - but it looks like they might be hitting some issues as they rush to attract famous writers to the platform - and paying them. On the outside it looks good that famous writers use you - but if you are paying them - and not discllosing that - we have an issue.

Beyond that, to pay someone means that you are choosing not to pay someone else - at which point you are becoming a publisher - not a platform and thus arguably support/agree with those writers words and opinions. What then distinguished you from any other publishing vehicle.

Vox has a view.

Then again there is this (spolier alert - an opposite pov : Adding My Data Point To The Discussion Of Substack Advances.

Once you get your head around elementor .. it is crazy easy … I’ve used it to build a gateway to all things philpin and a new space at People First that remains a ‘work in process’ as I attempt to build a non linear summary of ‘what it’s all about’.

The Future of Remote Work

Over on the podcast and in the newsletter - oh and in the People First network, I have been ruminating about remote work.

Photo by Christine Roy on Unsplash

Specifically about work visas and wondering where work is done and once you know where it is done - then - do you need a work visa?

Quick example. You LIVE in P0rtugal. You connect to servers in the US. You are paid in London. Your value is delivered (eg where the code (for example) is rendered and turned into something that can be charged for in Canada.

Where do you work?

Seems like I am not the only one, Adam Ozimek from Upwork shares his ideas about nomadic workforces with Matt Yglesias. He is really only talking about the US - but still raising valid and related questions about the other side of the where do you work equation - where do you go if you cant work. Which state?

They discuss the implications for migration, local governance, and the elusive concept of work/life balance. (Where have I heard that one before?)

Adam argues strongly for the whole work thing in America to be Federalized.

Listen to the podcast here. If you don’t have a full 60 minutes to listen - scoot through to minute 4o for the pertinent stuff.

Switch It Off Already

I'm kind of over people complaining about how LinkedIN sucks because ... or Facebook users are ... or Instagram Photos are ....

Social Media channels are like TV channels. If you don’t like them you can ignore them or even delete them.

Just do that. Why fill my feed with your rubbish.

In fact you can refine your feed even further ... block, remove, delete the people that offend you. It is

  • much easier
  • massively more effective
  • way quicker

than writing a screed on why you feel so upset.

Why Do You Work?

Photo by AR on Unsplash

I promise, Manton, Daniel and I did not coordinate this - I think sometimes synchronicity just happens.

In last weeks newsletter I asked the question

"Why Do You Work?"

A reply post will be available this Saturday.

There have been some great answers, but that is not the reason for this post.

Manton Reece - the brain behind Micro Blog 1 and Daniel Jalkut - the brain behind Red Sweater 2 have a weekly podcast called Core Intuition. This week I learned that they have been running their podcast for twelve years. A remarkable feat even of itself. Both of them are independent developers and this week the conversation turned to employment. A really nice discussion between two professionals that wrestle with following their dreams and passions, while balancing the need to put bread on the table.

Have a listen - you won't regret it and very pertinent to the discussion 'Why Do You Work'.

Footnotes

1] If you want to see MicroBlog working in the real world, my web site - John.Philpin.Com is powered by MicroBlog.

2] If you want to see Red Sweater working in the real world, that’s a little harder - but Daniel has a superb product called Mars Edit that I am using to write and post this article. Seriously. If you are a Mac user that writes a blog - you should be using Mars Edit.

Anyone else think that the ‘’remote work conversation’ has disappeared up our own posteriors?

All this discussion about remote work and asking if we will return to the old ways or adopt new ones.

Has anyone asked people that work in transport, retail, sanitation, manufacturing, construction, schools, hospitals, hospitality. 
 you know those jobs where there isn’t the choice 
 what they think?

The dominant conversation does seem to be about the minority of people.

Again!

When Zero Is Everything

For decades, the business world has embraced worker empowerment. But recently a countermovement—workforce optimization—has been on the rise. It treats labor as a commodity and seeks to cut it to a minimum by using automation and artificial intelligence, tightly controlling how people do their jobs, and replacing employees with contractors. This approach is especially prevalent in the tech sector and the gig economy. And it is cause for deep concern.

Peter Cappelli

I can only agree.

Read what Doc Searls has to say about Zero Party Data

Shaped By History?

”I thought back to the day I decided to go to law school. It was a warm spring day. May 4, 1970. I was a freshman at Oberlin College. A few days earlier, President Richard Nixon had expanded the Vietnam War by invading Cambodia. Antiwar college protests erupted throughout the country.

About 1 p.m. in the afternoon, the news hit us in the gut as we huddled around TVs and radios on our sheltered college campus. In just 12 seconds, the Ohio National Guard fired over 60 shots at student protesters at nearby Kent State University. Nine students were wounded, one of them paralyzed for life; and four students — Allison Krause, Jeff Miller, Sandra Scheuer, and Bill Schroeder — were killed.

Bill Schroeder was an ROTC student watching the protest; he was shot in the back. Sandy Scheuer was walking to class. I didn’t know them, but I’ve never forgotten their names.”

Lee Fisher
Photo by Andreea Popa on Unsplash

That quote comes from an article that my friend, colleague and 'he that keeps me on the straight and narrow' 
 Stuart Robbins just shared with me.

Stuart, thank-you.

My father fought for the British Army in the second world war. If you are 75 or under, you were not on planet earth during that war and as a result, the impact it had on that generation is being lost - if not forgotten.

The Vietnam war is much more recent, but still, is - like WWII being lost into history, so when I read first hand experiences, especially something as personal as the words Lee wrote, I like to stop and reflect for a moment.

And who is Lee Fisher?

”Lee Fisher is dean of Cleveland-Marshall College of Law at Cleveland State University. He is the former Ohio attorney general, lieutenant governor, director of the Ohio Department of Development, chair of the Ohio Third Frontier Commission, president and CEO of the Center for Families and Children, president and CEO of CEOs for Cities, state representative and state senator.

But there's more. He recently came on to the People First Podcast and talked with Stuart about Law - and, IMHO, more importantly Leadership in Law. If you don’t want to jump off to another site, you can listen to it right here ...

[cdn.simplecast.com/audio/d86...](https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/d8638681-f4eb-453b-81d7-d86dcb079f26/episodes/bfe8acac-cf70-412b-acb3-64930cb4bd10/audio/1d831d61-8308-44bc-81f8-585aedf1b550/default_tc.mp3)

Or follow the link to a great interview, weighing in at under 30 minutes of 'gold'.

I often find that knowing a little more about people, their history and what shaped them, helps me understand the context of who they are today and what they are saying. Lee is no exception. In fact I think it is possible to draw a straight line from the experience he described in that quote above to his life's work. I hope you agree.

Slack Solves The Wrong Problem Really Well

Or as Cal puts it 


"Slack is the Right Tool for the Wrong Way to Work."

”The future of office work won’t be found in continuing to reduce the friction involved in messaging but, instead, in figuring out how to avoid the need to send so many messages in the first place.”

Cal Newport

Cal nails the problem I have with Slack that I have never managed to nail down.

Read the article in The New Yorker

Thinking Allowed

This is a People First post that was originally on the People First domain. It has been moved here as part of my domain consolidation program. It’s a steady and slow WIP as I check each entry, so do please bear with me.

Shifting the People First Newsletter Format.

Every Tuesday - ask a question.

Every Friday (10 days later), provide a summary of the aggregated feedback with ‘personal opinion and annotation’ for AN answer.

This Week 


Why Do You Work

Why not weigh in?

People First?

It goes back to the Romans!

The battle of hearts is what wins wars

This just in from one of my podcast listeners, thanking me … nice

Are you listening?

The Difference Between What You Have And What You Dream.

A Newsletter On And About Substack - It’s The End Of An Era.

What do you think?

Which side do you fall on?

#thenandnow #differences #peoplefirst #debate #dialogue

Episode 61 of The People First Podcast is now available - a podcast that introduces to Daniel Szuc- an Aussie, living in Hong Kong who with his wife Jo has launched Make Meaningful Work. Take a listen.

It used to be that we lived in private and chose to make parts of our lives public. Now that is being turned on its head. We live in public, like the movie says (except via micro-signals not 24–7 video self-surveillance), and choose what parts of our lives to keep private.

Ben Schott - 2010 - TEN YEARS AGO

Read More.

ClubHouse

People ... Process and THEN Technology ... but as usual the world at large is ignoring the advice - and jumping straight into an app without much thought ... let me explain.

If you are a celeb - you can get in.

A Clubhouse - photo by kilarov zaneit

Photo by kilarov zaneit on Unsplash

If you are one of the masses ... we have a wait line for you ... once you have downloaded our app and given us your telephone number ... curiously out of the box it asks you to confirm the phone number you want it to use ... so it has already read the data on my phone - without my permission - even before I have been accepted.

It is iPhone only for now. (They know where the money is).

The site itself tells you nothing - but others have explored and looked and opined. (Links at the end.)

But What About Privacy?

One thing the site could have done would be to talk about their privacy policies, where the data is, why they have it (because they don’t seem to ask for it) and why they need it. Not to mention how they intend to handle things like harassment. But like all good 'bro software' - we'll sort that out later ....

Nothing on the site reveals much about what people should be concerned about, only what they are concerned about ... access to celebrities!

Diving further down ...

"Recording any conversation is strictly forbidden, meaning your encounters with VIP members or general conversations are protected."

ClubHouse

... how do they manage that? They don’t. Nothing stops me audio recording a conversation ... if I can hear it ... I can record it. (By the way - I am sure that they record it. Are they? The prohibition stated applies to us - not them. And I assume that if they aren't now - they will be using AI to scan the voices to 'learn more about us' in the future.

Contacts

Also - any idea if your contacts are safe? Or are they going to be mined aswell? (In fairness - I just checked my phone - they aren't even listed on the 'approved apps' - but then again, I'm not in yet.

But here is the truly insidious thing. Let’s say you have no interest in Clubhouse. That said you aren’t a hermit. You are ‘connected’. You have to be. The people that are inviting you to join Clubhouse know that you are connected and in their minds should be there. And that’s just the ones you know about.

The fact is that if you are in the contact book of anybody that has joined Clubhouse ... it’s a safe bet to assume (like it or not) that your information is already in the ‘Clubhouse Social Graph. And if you know anyone who is inviting people - your data has definitely been uploaded.

Watch the articles start to appear in the mainstream press as Clubhouse starts to grow. Watch people throw their hands into the air and ask ‘who knew this was happening’ ... who gave Clubhouse permission. I don’t need to wait.

The answer is you - assuming you joined and invited people.

Ignorance

The sad thing is that all of this (and I am writing this as Clubhouse numbers are sitting around 1 million) is so clear to anybody who pays attention or even stops to think for two minutes before clicking away on buttons ‘confirming their agreement’)

This play is designed to operate around 'ignorance', at worst and at best - ‘who cares - I don’t mind - I have nothing to hide’.

You might not, but Clubhouse and similar actors also don’t care about you (sorry). The point is that they have no interest at all in the ‘nodes’ on the graph - they are focussed on the connections and you dear clubhouse member are feeding the beast ... but not just with your information ...mine aswell.

Added Thought (21st February 2021)

It just occurred to me as I was reading ...

this (Why Hot New Social App Clubhouse Spells Nothing But Trouble) from the Guardian

... how hard would it be for Apple ( if they do it - others will follow - after they stop laughing ) to offer two contact/address books. Only you know which is real and which is a dummy. In the dummy, you keep a couple of contacts and it is that which you upload when asked by corporations like Clubhouse.

Of course - Clubhouse will then demand a minimum of (say) '100 contacts', and then a market will spring up - ÂŁ5 for 100 dummy contacts. $10 if you want to include names like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Marc Andreesen, Paul Davison and Rohan Seth - you know the people that cause these problems to begin with, you can!

Additional Highlights:

Before we get to what others are saying ... this is what they are saying (not much and it goes back to July last year).

Clearly not yet worked out:

How will we evaluate complaints of abuse or harassment when we don’t record user conversations? 

Clubhouse Post (and the only reference to 'harassment in the entire post)

But It's Already Valued At $100 Million!

Of course it is. Andreesen Horowitz dropped a cool $10 million into their bank - and if they got 10% of the company for that deposit - then the company is valued at $100Million ... The 'V'in 'VC' stands for 'Voodoo'.

But still - nothing as to how they recoup that investment.

So How Do They Make Money?

No idea.

I lie. Lots of ideas ...

They will upload all your contacts to their servers.

They aren't recording - but they say nothing about scraping the conversation running it through AI and building a profile of you - after all - they know who you are - what you are saying - which groups you are in .... (and if don’t think they can dynamically and in real-time scrape and transform your spoken words into text - then clearly you have not seen Descript.

Of course - I have no idea if all this is happening, could happen, would happen - but just three months ago - Facebookers were up in arms after watching 'The Social Dilemma' and now here we go again - flocking like lemmings to become the latest product for Silicon Valley tech bros to use.

This is their privacy policy. Take a read, that policy doesn’t say anything about not being able to do all that I just described. In fact, it all but spells out that this is exactly what they are going to do. Also interesting that they keep it on 'Notion'.

Various people have said different versions of these words in the past - I like the one from Rounders ... that talks about if you cant spot the mark - you are the mark.

Maybe I'm wrong. Wouldn't be the first time .... but if I am - can someone tell me how they make money?

Clubhouse Articles

(I have ignored all the puff stuff from March and simply linking to December / January stuff - now that the honeymoon is over.)

Vanity Fair - The Murky World of Moderation on Clubhouse.

spoiler alert - what moderation?

Vogue - Everything You Need to Know About Clubhouse, the App Celebrities Are Flocking To.

spoiler alert - that 'celebrity access' is both a clue and the key.

Bloomberg - Private Social App Clubhouse Courts Fresh Controversy

One exception, Wired - back in May.

Wired - They aren't big fans.

Conclusion

No, I don’t know everything about what this app is setting out to do.

When that blog post came out, there were only two full time members of the team - the two founders. One is ex Pinterest. The other is ex Google. So nothing to worry about there. Right?

To my mind their 'Field of Dreams' approach - 'Build it and they will come' is working for them ... but at what cost to the people that join in. I've requested access - and sitting quietly waiting to hear back from someone. I am not going to push for access - I am just interested to see how long it actually takes.

Once in - I will be able to say more, but my initial thoughts are very much of a 'wait - haven't we been down this road before'?

Thinking Allowed

This is a People First post that was originally on the People First domain. It has been moved here as part of my domain consolidation program. It’s a steady and slow WIP as I check each entry, so do please bear with me.