And how many websites are going to sport this badge ?
Because there aren't that many popular websites left that actually respect people's privacy...
Look out, Pepe: Martha Lane Fox has a plan
Virtuous websites will be able to signal their goodness to the world under a new scheme proposed by digital quango queen Martha Lane Fox. The posh Lastminute.com founder and Twitter board member has floated the idea of a "fair trade"-style badge for websites that "respect user privacy and provide equal access for all". The …
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Monday 6th November 2017 12:16 GMT Tigra 07
Martha Lane should get a proper job
Isn't this already Google's job? To rid the world of free speech, push social justice warrior values, and hound people with opposing views off the internet instead of making a decent counterargument (and make their personal lives a living hell, paint them as bigots too, etc).
I despair at how (some) millenials are creating a 1984 world with this shite.
The best accomplishment we have managed is freedom of speech and the free exchange of ideas. Remember what happened when the BNP controlled a council and advertised their values more broadly. They collapsed, their support dried up, and now >10 years later they don't exist.
Don't silence your opponents, counter with a more valid/reasonable argument.
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Monday 6th November 2017 13:56 GMT codejunky
Re: Martha Lane should get a proper job
@ Tigra 07
Unfortunately that is too grown up for todays world. We have to silence anyone who dare say anything someone wishes to take offence at. I say it that way because someone will always be offended at something but the problem has now somehow become the speaker not the person who takes offence.
I do laugh that a person who is very much like this (and a student btw) also supports things like the slut walk to 'take back the word'. Anyone remembering the UKIP scandal where the new meaning of slut was used to attack the party when the old meaning was used. All people are equal but some more than others.
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Monday 6th November 2017 16:27 GMT Tigra 07
Re: Martha Lane should get a proper job
Try being LGBT. Then it became LGBTI...Then LGBTIA...
I think they've managed to expand it so much now most people don't know what it is and some of the letters are just made up... LGBTQQIAADGDVLA
I've been poisoned by so much SJW shite that i know what all those letters are (Except for the DVLA bit which is clearly a joke)
For anyone not aware, about 8 of those letters are duplicates from people who "don't want to be labelled" (as bisexual) but insist on labelling themselves as something with an almost identical definition...
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Monday 6th November 2017 17:39 GMT Yet Another Anonymous coward
Re: All those acronyms...
If we could just accept the Kinsey scale we could all be numbers instead of acronyms...
If you assigned a real number to amount of maleness and another imaginary one to amount of femaleness then we could all just be a simple point on a complex plane.
With the extra advantage that the rules for multiplication are simple and widely understood
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Monday 6th November 2017 18:00 GMT JEDIDIAH
Re: All those acronyms...
What makes you think that one random pervert wants to be associated with an entirely random different sort of pervert? This is entirely orthogonal to the question of whether or not pervert #1 approves of or supports the agenda of pervert #2. Tolerating them is quite distinct from supporting their particular agenda du jour.
Even if you identify as pervert #2, you may not buy completely into the agenda du jour.
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Monday 6th November 2017 22:39 GMT Daggerchild
Re: Martha Lane should get a proper job
"Don't silence your opponents, counter with a more valid/reasonable argument."
The last time I saw this it was being said by a Gamergater trying to attack that lady who had switched off her comment system due to the abuse, because they wanted, nay demanded, to be able to continue, in the name of fairness!
I've tried the "reasonable argument" thing before - every common neural labelling of an object, concept, or grouping, was disputed to first playschool principles. Even mathematics can be disputed if you demand convincing yet complex explanations loudly enough. Even agreeing on whether someone was alive or dead was a significant victory. It was fascinating. Depressing, but fascinating.
There are ways to construct and explore common thoughtforms, but all parties need training in it, otherwise you're just debating religion. Of course, then the word 'indoctrination' comes up and...
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Monday 6th November 2017 12:16 GMT m0rt
"El Reg's use of the MLF acronym pre-dates the immensely stupid acronym "Mother I'd Like To..." book in for a spa weekend. "
Really? Because the earliest El Reg search puts your use at 2009...
And then you have: https://fas.org/irp/world/para/milf.htm
..and..although not meeting journalistic requirements for publishing, anecdotally: http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/did-the-term-milf-exist-before-american-pie-movie.47500538/
Sorry. It is a low point in the day...
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Monday 6th November 2017 12:27 GMT m0rt
Haaaang on - I totally missed this..
"When she's not promoting controversial conspiracy theories, she reliably and staunchly defends Twitter, which appointed her to its board last April."
Isn't this a MASSIVE conflict of interest? Being in the Lords where policy gets formed, especially more and more regarding the virtual realm, and being on the board of Twitter? This does leave rather a nasty taste in my mouth.
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Monday 6th November 2017 13:08 GMT Brewster's Angle Grinder
"Isn't this a MASSIVE conflict of interest? Being in the Lords where policy gets formed....and being on the board of Twitter?"
I'll think you find most members of the Lords who aren't senile are on the boards of companies. For example, Lord Addington is "Member of and Adviser to the Board of X-Forces (XF) Ltd" and Lord Adonis is "Non-executive Director, RM plc...[and]...Non-executive Director, Dods (Group) plc" and so on. The same with MPs.
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Monday 6th November 2017 17:21 GMT m0rt
Re: @judekay
Actually not too well.
However, the best rickroll I fell victim to was a mate gave me a stack of LPs a couple of years ago. I can't remember where he got them from.
Inside, deftly hidden in the middle, was that very same Album. I only discovered this after returning a couple of hundred miles away.
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Monday 6th November 2017 13:08 GMT I ain't Spartacus
How about the Badger's Nadgers?
The Dog's Bollocks is too well known, and too rude. But the Badger's Nadgers still implies goodness in all things. Plus you can have a cute badger logo. As well as the good connotations, we also have the stern example of Badger from Wind in the Willows to live up to.
He'd soon sort out the Weasels of Google and Facebook.
So I propose a Benevolent Badger icon, sternly gazing down at two weasels crouched at it's feet (one with a Facebook the other a Google logo), which he's hitting with a big stick, which can be labelled "the Privacy Bat". And behind him could be a sign saying, "Mind your own bloody business!"
So our organisation ought to monitor privacy, the obnoxiousness of advertising on the site, and readability. So no membership for the most honourable of sites, if they for example have dark brown text on a mid brown background.
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Monday 6th November 2017 13:35 GMT Dave 126
Accessibility
If the badge denotes that the website is accessible to all users it should be in Braille, or at the very least embossed.
I saw a documentary once called Brass Eye about how web scum can feel children through a monitor, so obviously this underused haptic technology does exist. It's just Nonce Sense.
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Monday 6th November 2017 13:53 GMT Nick Kew
Re: Accessibility
If the badge denotes that the website is accessible to all users it should be in Braille, or at the very least embossed.
Erm, jokes aren't always obvious in text. Trouble with yours is, it's scarily close to some of the misguided things idiots do for real in the pursuit of an illusion of accessibility.
Putting on my expert hat[1] I should point out that accessibility comes straight from well-written HTML, and it takes a lot less effort to get right than many sites put in to subverting it. From memory, Lane-Fox's own lastminute was one of those that put vast effort into b*****ing it up.
[1] Some years ago I served as Invited Expert with the W3C on accessibility.
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Monday 6th November 2017 14:00 GMT JimmyPage
Re: Some years ago I served as Invited Expert with the W3C on accessibility.
But now realise how you wasted that time.
My partner has MS, so problems with vision as well as locomotion. I could count on the fingers of one hand websites that are *properly* accessible.
If society as a whole can't manage to make the web - which should be accessible AS STANDARD - accessible, what hope for the real world, with those stupid steps, and kerbs, and narrow doorways.
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Monday 6th November 2017 15:00 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: Some years ago I served as Invited Expert with the W3C on accessibility.
The sad thing is that wheelchair accessibility can be genuinely hard. Especially in old buildings. And has real costs to make real physical changes.
But accessibility for visually impaired people is moslty a piece of piss. You just need to do stuff you're already doing, only do it properly! Which is as true in the physical world as it is online.
If your signage is clear, and your website properly laid out and standards compliant, you're mostly done. That just leaves you to obviously mark the edges of steps in a contrasting colour, and put visible stickers on any unmarked plate glass doors you've stupidly decided to fit - which are both something you should be doing anyway.
Finally you can consider whether it's appropriate or helpful to provide audio-guides/braille/large print options or not.
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Monday 6th November 2017 15:23 GMT Steve the Cynic
Re: Some years ago I served as Invited Expert with the W3C on accessibility.
"put visible stickers on any unmarked plate glass doors you've stupidly decided to fit"
And solid glass walls with a six-floor drop behind them, like one place I worked in some years back.
You think I'm kidding? I'm not. Apart from a few things, every wall in the place was glass:
* Toilets.
* External and internal structural walls.
* One guy had a darkroom, but the dark leaks out through glass walls.
* The company had an on-site nurse (1500+ people worked in the building), and her office had opaque walls.
*Payroll was done in a closed-off area with frosted glass walls.
And this atrium thing had non-structural internal walls in floor-to-ceiling glass. From my floor the drop into the atrium was six floors. The glass was at least a quarter-inch thick, and probably laminated with it. And it had quite visible stripes on it so you could see it, since crashing into it would be painful because of its rigid solidity.
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Monday 6th November 2017 16:06 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: Some years ago I served as Invited Expert with the W3C on accessibility.
I hope the glass toilets were also opaque!
You do worry about some architects. They see a dystopian Sci-Fi film and then go and design their buildings to look like it, not realising the film is portraying a hellhole!
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Monday 6th November 2017 16:24 GMT Steve the Cynic
Re: Some years ago I served as Invited Expert with the W3C on accessibility.
"I hope the glass toilets were also opaque!"
Ha ha! Got me! No, I meant those were the things that *were* opaque, or at least not transparent. (Frosted glass isn't *opaque* - light gets through it easily - but there's no way I'd call it transparent.)
And I have seen a place with toilets that had glass doors on the stalls.
In front of the big art museum in the middle of Amsterdam there is a restaurant called "Cobra". It's named after the art movement(1), not the snake, and isn't at all dodgy. In the basement, there are large and posh toilets, and as you arrive, there is usually a mix of opaque and transparent glass doors on the stalls. And you notice that ALL the opaque ones are taken, and ALL the transparent ones are free.
But nature continues to call, so you go into one of the available ones, hoping that there are no voyeurs in the area, and you discover that as soon as you lock the door, the glass becomes opaque.(2)
But before that moment, the urge to stick a cork in the orifice and run screaming for your hotel is very strong.
(1) COpenhangen BRussells, Amsterdam, if you must know.
(2) Well, in 2006 it was like that.
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Tuesday 7th November 2017 12:34 GMT x 7
Re: Some years ago I served as Invited Expert with the W3C on accessibility.
Heard a story years ago where the reverse was true.....the stalls in the ladies loo became transparent when they closed the door.....if you wanted privacy, you left the door open
that was also a nightclub in Amsterdam
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Monday 6th November 2017 13:56 GMT JimmyPage
Re: Accessibility
What grinds my gears (have a partner who has to use a wheelchair) is when the "accessibility" link on the website blabbers on about the website accessibility (which is almost invariably shit as my partners sight is poor too) rather then the premises accessibility
The end result is a less able person can't even read how inaccessible the place is.
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Monday 6th November 2017 16:12 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: The cutting room floor is littered with this thread of comments.....
El Reg have moderation, so are subject to libel laws - so if you said anything that looked a bit dodgy to a busy subbie without the time to check if was OK, then it probably got zapped.
It's not like it's hard to get along without moderation on these forums. Apparently I've got 6k posts on here, and I think I've been modded twice. And one of those was a post I replied to that got zapped along with all the responses.
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Monday 6th November 2017 16:53 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: The cutting room floor is littered with this thread of comments.....
Yup, this is why I'm curious what's wrong..... Never rejected before, and I've said stuff that was *way* closer to the edge that what I said above. I'm open to education, should a censor be arsed. I'm also curious why there should be multiple instances of rejection on this thread. Removals by moderator are like rocking horse shit.
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Monday 6th November 2017 20:47 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: The cutting room floor is littered with this thread of comments.....
Yeah, but I've gotta say, I'm innocent of anything other than an attempt at wit, no stronger than would have been on display in a 'carry on' film. Still unsure why prudishness seemingly absent normally, came to the forefront when the noble baroness gets mentioned. Its obvious that no one is going to have the courtesy to explain. I'm definitely not guilty. Free the el reg one.
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Monday 6th November 2017 17:19 GMT Jim 59
It might be a good idea, if they can keep the politics out of it. But what are the chances of that?
Will it eventually become a badge meaning "this website agrees politically with the people who awarded this badge" ? Given the condition of much of social media, it seems likely. The badge might then become just one more piece of ordinance in the ongoing "culture war".
Many things are better without the addition of politics. Remembrance is one example. If MLT and co can indeed produce something like the Fairtrade mark, and treat it as such, then it might just work.
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Monday 6th November 2017 17:45 GMT Yet Another Anonymous coward
Don't websites already do this ?
I thought there was a standard for marking whether internet packets were good or bad ?
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
