Thought-provoking Things Worth Sharing - Issue #90
Social Media is Already Dead For Some Things
Welcome to this week’s collection of thought-provoking things. I write this weekly newsletter so subscribers can see some of the things I’m writing and sharing without depending on social media algorithms to show them to you. Each week I’ll share information about careers and workplace culture, mental health in the workplace, talent development, and important information about privacy, security, and legal tech.
You can find out all about me here - Mike McBride Online.
I was reading through the latest missive from the Substack team, above, and found myself nodding along to this paragraph:
Ad-based social platforms want writers’ and creators’ audiences glued to their feeds, and they design their products to keep them from leaving. In 2012, Twitter stopped embedding Instagram posts after Facebook acquired the photo-sharing app. Today, Facebook deprioritizes links that take people away from its feed. Google prioritizes YouTube search results over TikTok and Vimeo. While Twitter has now come for writers on Substack, it is extremely likely that we won’t be the last publishing platform to receive this treatment.
I’ve watched this play out as someone who had been using social media to promote my own blogs. There’s pretty much no point to that any longer. As I’ve taken advantage of this time in between jobs to reprioritize my online life, social media is taking a backseat. I’ve already closed a Facebook group for child abuse survivors for one simple reason. People would post quality information and links to resources and the analytics would tell me 7-8 people saw the posts. (There are over 1,500 members.) At that rate of viewership, why bother? Why take the time to run that group? I’m seeing the same thing with Twitter accounts, Facebook Pages, etc. A tiny fraction of the people who signed up to follow them actually see anything unless I were to start paying for ads, which I’m not going to do for something I don’t make any money from to start with.
Part of my reprioritizing is to continue to auto-publish the links to social media but cut back on actively being involved. I would rather spend my time writing quality stuff and sharing information on my own website, this newsletter, and in potential future endeavors than waste it trying to gin up engagement on a platform designed to make that harder for me.
As a writer, trainer, and someone who is trying to help educate others, I know when I’m not wanted, and ad-based social media seems to be that place.
I hope you’ll continue to follow along in the places that make that easier for you.
Careers and the Workplace
Do You Know Why Employees Leave? Do You Know Why They Stay?
My point isn't to toot my own horn. It's to give you a concrete example of what a difference sitting and talking to your employees can make in terms of understanding what works for them, or doesn't work for them in the workplace. A survey has a purpose, especially when you realize that meeting one on one with all of your employees doesn't scale very far. If you really want to know what's going on, though, don't wait for someone to leave so you conduct an exit interview. A stay interview might prevent them from leaving in the first place.
"It takes a different set of leadership and management skills to create the conditions for effective distributed work. But it’s incredibly powerful when you get it right."
Linked: In Praise of Doing Nothing - Salaried tech workers, if you regularly work 9 hours per day, that is 30 days of extra, unpaid, work per year. 50-60 hours per week? 60-120 days of free labor.
Training and Development
Employees and Employers Have Roles to Play in Career Development
It is in your best interest to have employees who are growing and advancing in their careers. One is because they continue to become more valuable to the organization, which you need. Secondly, as they grow and become more valuable they are also more likely to stay. Turnover is costly. The organization can provide mentors and other resources that would be more difficult to do on their own. In return, they get employees who grow with the organization. Who wouldn't want that?
Mental Health in the Workplace
What's the point of all of those accomplishments if you never have any fun?
This Is How To Overcome Burnout: 6 Secrets From Research
Privacy, Security, and Legal Tech
Congressional Think Tank Sees the Problem with Age Verification - Members Not so Much
Proving your identity and your age eliminates the ability for anyone to remain anonymous. You might argue that is a good thing, but I'll take the opposite side. There are plenty of reasons for someone to remain anonymous online, and why we'd be worse off eliminating that. Whistleblowers, political dissidents of fascist governments, victims of childhood and spousal abuse, people dealing with mental health issues, women, the LGBTQ community, and many others have legitimate reasons to fear being identified. Do we want to eliminate them all from the public space?
Will Microsoft Start Un-bundling M365 Licenses?
If Teams bundled with Office is anti-competitive, what other tools available in M365 could likewise be considered anti-competitive?
Interesting reading about how AI might finally blow up the billable hour business model. And yet, after all these years and all the things that were supposed to have already ended it, I remain skeptical.
Moving eDiscovery U-P-S-T-R-E-A-M
A New Low For Hackers – Threatening to Disclose Patient Medical, Mental Health Records - Makes sense. If the organization won't pay the ransom maybe the patients have more incentive to do so. I expect this to start targeting gender-affirming and women's health in the US soon, right?
Shadow IT & SaaS remain major security threats! - They’re not going anywhere.
You have rights, depending on what state you live in right now - Companies Are Hoarding Personal Data About You. Here’s How to Get Them to Delete It.
That’s all folks. If you found something interesting in this week’s newsletter, please share it with your friends. It’s the best way to help support the effort I put in each week to share this with you.