Home » privacy (Page 14)
Category Archives: privacy
Digital Culture Links: May 5th 2010
Links for May 4th 2010 through May 5th 2010:
- Twitter is the New CNN | Lance Ulanoff [PCMag.com] – A pretty solid argument about why Twitter is better at sharing news and information than being a social network as such. The inequality of links (ie you don’t agree with a twitter contact to mutually interact, you can follow without being followed) is one of the strongest arguments against SNS use although, ultimately, I think is still depends on how individuals use the platform.
- Keeping Your Photos Off Facebook & Other Privacy Concerns [The Age] – Stock-standard piece reminding everyone that stuff on Facebook and other social networks often isn’t private (and you should check if you think it is). I’m not sure quoting a “Cyber psychologist” talking about young people having a yet-to-mature frontal cortex is really the winning argument, though! Equally, the advice at the end (basically: be aware and check your Facebook settings) would be a little more genuine if it linked to something which actually illustrated HOW to make those changes (the complexity of Facebook’s privacy settings is one of the biggest privacy challenges today!)
- Viacom v YouTube is a microcosm of the entertainment industry [guardian.co.uk] – Cory Doctorow’s fighting words about Viacom Vs YouTube: “From the Digital Economy Act to the anti-counterfeiting trade agreement, Big Content’s top brass are looking for ways to increase the liability borne by “intermediaries” – the companies that host and transmit user-uploaded material – in order to give them the footing from which to put pressure on tech firms to pay them off and go into bankruptcy. The lawmakers who say that they favour these draconian copyright powers are not on the side of creators. The creators are the ones busily shovelling their creative works on to YouTube. These laws are designed to provide full employment for the litigation industry, and to encourage the moral hazard that has TV and record companies turning into lawsuit factories.”
- ‘One Book, One Twitter’ launches worldwide book club with Neil Gaiman | Books [guardian.co.uk] – Twitter as global book club: “The brainchild of Jeff Howe, author of Crowdsourcing and a contributing editor at Wired magazine, the One Book, One Twitter scheme launches tomorrow. Readers have been voting for the book which they’ll be tackling for the past month, with Neil Gaiman’s fantasy novel American Gods eventually triumphing […] “The aim with One Book, One Twitter is – like the one city, one book programme which inspired it – to get a zillion people all reading and talking about a single book. It is not, for instance, an attempt to gather a more selective crew of book lovers to read a series of books and meet at established times to discuss,” explained Howe at Wired.com. “Usually such ‘Big Read’ programs are organised around geography. […] This Big Read is organised around Twitter, and says to hell with physical limitations.””
- Choose Privacy Week Video [Vimeo] – Fast-paced largely talking-head style video advocating better attention to privacy online. The video is US-based and features lots of candid interviews along with notable privacy advocates including Cory Doctorow and Neil Gaiman. Launched as part of the first US Privacy Week, 2-8 May, 2010. (Downloadable as 1280×720, 344.57MB Quicktime movie.) [Via BBoing]
Choose Privacy Week Video from 20K Films on Vimeo.
A Few More Than 140 Characters
I’ve been meaning to share this document for a while; it unpacks a standard tweet (post on Twitter) and shows you how much data is actually contained in each and everyone one of those seemingly fleeting moments of sharing:
[Via RWW] If you’re interested in what sort of information can be included within a standard tweet, you might find this interesting, too.
Digital Culture Links: April 29th 2010
Links for April 25th 2010 through April 29th 2010:
- Thoughts on Flash [Steve Jobs – Apple] – Steve Jobs nails down Flash’s coffin with his post from on high about why the iRange don’t (and won’t) support Flash: “Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short. The avalanche of media outlets offering their content for Apple’s mobile devices demonstrates that Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content. And the 200,000 apps on Apple’s App Store proves that Flash isn’t necessary for tens of thousands of developers to create graphically rich applications, including games. New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.”
- Facebook’s Eroding Privacy Policy: A Timeline [Electronic Frontier Foundation] – Useful, albeit disappointing, timeline: “Since its incorporation just over five years ago, Facebook has undergone a remarkable transformation. When it started, it was a private space for communication with a group of your choice. Soon, it transformed into a platform where much of your information is public by default. Today, it has become a platform where you have no choice but to make certain information public, and this public information may be shared by Facebook with its partner websites and used to target ads. […] Facebook originally earned its core base of users by offering them simple and powerful controls over their personal information. As Facebook grew larger and became more important, it could have chosen to maintain or improve those controls. Instead, it’s slowly but surely helped itself — and its advertising and business partners — to more and more of its users’ information, while limiting the users’ options to control their own information.”
- O’Hara, Kieron (2010) Intimacy 2.0: Privacy Rights and Privacy Responsibilities on the World Wide Web. In: Proceedings of the WebSci10: Extending the Frontiers of Society On-Line, April 26-27th, 2010, Raleigh, NC: US. (In Press) – Abstract: “This paper examines the idea of privacy in the world of ‘intimacy 2.0’, the use of Web 2.0 social networking technologies and multimedia for the routine posting of intimate details of users’ lives. It will argue that, although privacy is often conceived as a right with benefits that accrue to the individual, it is better seen as a public good, whose benefits accrue to the community in general. In that case, the costs of allowing invasions of one’s privacy do not solely fall on the individual who is unwise enough to do so, but also on wider society.” [PDF]
- Noticed – College Applicants Hide Behind Facebook Aliases [NYTimes.com] – Are colleges in the US checking the digital footprints on applicants? Well, the number of aspiring college applicants changing their Facebook names because that’s their suspicion is definitely growing!
Digital Culture Links: April 23rd 2010
Facebook-centric links April 23rd 2010:
- Facebook Instant Personalization Opt OUT [YouTube] – Quick YouTube video from EFF showing how to opt out of Facebook’s ‘Instant Personalisation’ (which is turned ON by default).
- Facebook “Likes” World Domination [Mashable] – Previous social networks, you’ll remember, were destinations. As soon as Friendster became slow and unreliable, an exodus to MySpace began. Once MySpace pages became bloated and unwieldy, the crowd hopped over to Facebook. Zuckerberg is well aware of the threat: If you build a destination site, users will hop over to the next cool hangout in no time at all. That’s why Facebook longs to become a sturdy platform. The more businesses rely on Facebook, the less likely it is to fail. […] and thousands of websites now use Facebook Connect for their login systems. The toolbar and web-wide “like” button are the next phase; by providing more distributed services, Facebook becomes invaluable. Credits, Connect, toolbars — these are all distributed plays that try to weave Facebook’s social graph throughout the fabric of the web. Rather than aiming to be the coolest bar in town — and losing its clientele when they leave for a hipper spot — Facebook plans to become the Starbucks of the web …”
- Facebook Open Graph: What it Means for Privacy [Mashable] – Sensible thoughts on the privacy implications of Facebook’s new web plugins: “… it is imperative that users who have concerns about privacy make sure they read and understand what information they are making available to applications before using them. Users need to be aware that when they “Like” an article on CNN, that “Like” may show up on a customized view that their friends see. Public no longer means “public on Facebook,” it means “public in the Facebook ecosystem.” Some companies, like Pandora, are going to go to great lengths to allow users to separate or opt out of linking their Pandora and Facebook accounts together, but users can’t expect all apps and sites to take that approach. My advice to you: Be aware of your privacy settings.”
- Facebook introduces Docs, based on Microsoft Web Office [Technology | guardian.co.uk] – A good at the differences between Google and Microosft/Facebook’s cloud office tools: “Facebook Docs is still in beta, so it’s not clear how many features it will offer. However, Microsoft’s Web Apps suite is more powerful than Google Docs, and has the advantage of maintaining compatibility with the desktop version of Microsoft Office. With Google Docs, by contrast, what you get out of it is worse than what you put into it, so trying to “round trip” complex documents is basically a waste of time. Of course, Microsoft Office Web Apps will be available to everyone whether they are a member of Facebook or not. Facebook is providing the social features, such as documents appearing on walls and in profiles so that friends can comment on them, and so on. For some users, the combination will be worthwhile.”
- Introducing Docs… for Facebook [Docs.com Blog] – Microsoft’s online office 2010 offering ‘Docs’ partners with Facebook, allowing Facebook users to sign in, share and collaborate on documents. Clearly a direct challenge to Google’s emerging Google Docs and Spreadsheets.
- Breaking: Android – Now On The iPhone [App Advice] – One way around iPhone love but no wanting to be locked into Apple’s AppStore is simple: hack it and install Android instead! 🙂
Facebook “Likes” Everything
Facebook’s annual developer’s conference, f8, has resulted in a deluge of news about new Facebook changes and tools which will keep commentators and analysts busy for days to come, but the most significant is clearly the redevelopment of the tools which connect Facebook and other websites according to the social activities of Facebook’s more than 400 million users. In a post with a deceptively philanthropic tone, Building the Social Web Together, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg reinforces his company’s vision of making the web more meaningful to users (and advertisers):
People are increasingly discovering information not just through links to web pages but also from the people and things they care about. This flow of social information has profound benefits—from driving better decisions to keeping in touch more easily—and we’re really proud that Facebook is part of the shift toward more social and personalized experiences everywhere online. […] Three years ago […] I introduced the concept of the social graph, which is the idea that if you mapped out all the connections between people and the things they care about, it would form a graph that connects everyone together. Facebook has focused mostly on mapping out the part of the graph around people and their relationships. At the same time, other sites and services have been mapping out other parts of the graph so you can get relevant information about different types of things. For example, Yelp maps out the best local businesses and Pandora maps out which songs are related to each other. All of these connections are important parts of the social graph, but until now it hasn’t been possible to easily share the connections
So, in an attempt to create your total ‘social graph’ and link up all of your social data, Facebook’s has a raft of new social plugins and personal integration tools which will allow any website, news story or media item, to become something you can ‘Like’. More to the point, through Facebook you can share every single thing you ‘Like’ with all of your Facebook friends (or the entire world if you happen to have a public profile!).
The simplest explanation of ‘Like’ generated by these tools: you go to a website, you like that website, you click the Facebook ‘Like’ button and two things happen: (1) a message appears on your Facebook profile telling your friends you liked that website; and (2) on the website in question a picture of you (from your Facebook profile image) appears on the website you liked, saying you liked this website, along with pictures of any of your Facebook friends who also liked that website (importantly this personalised list is only visible to you and only if logged in to Facebook). Mashable also has a good overview, noting how very simple it is to integrate Facebook’s ‘Like’ into other websites and services. Facebook’s own explanation of the social plugins and the Like buttons is here, but it’s noteworthy that from the very beginning they are try to stress that Facebook is not giving your private Facebook data to other people:
It’s important to note that none of your personal data is shared with a site when you view these new features, and they will only be visible to you when you’re logged in to Facebook. Also, none of these features impact or change Facebook’s advertising programs or policies.
However, it is of course true that every little ‘Like’ you click deepens the profile of you that Facebook owns, and that richer information becomes more and more valuable it is to advertisers – even when that information has specific personal identifiers removed. While I do think Facebook are showing a healthier concern for people’s privacy, I’m far from convinced sharing all of this information with Facebook is a good thing. Personalisation can be incredibly useful (I find Amazon’s suggestions quite useful, for example, and that’s only possible because they cleverly mine my Amazon purchase history) but it always has some cost and that’s worth keeping in mind. Most of all, what really makes me nervous is how terribly excited marketing folks are by Facebook’s new tools; for them privacy is usually an obstacle, not a right. And, of course, privacy advocates are doing some very sensible flag-waving, asking people think before they ‘Like’. With Zuckerberg boasting that he expects a billion ‘Like’ buttons on the web within 24hours, it’s probably time for everyone to think through exactly how much information they’re willing to share, and what you’ll like Facebook to know, and remember, about you.
Digital Culture Links: April 21st 2010
Links for April 21st 2010:
- Hitler Is Very Upset That Constantin Film Is Taking Down Hitler Parodies [TechCrunch] – It looks like the Hitler Gets Upset About [Whatever] meme might be drawing to an end thanks to copyright issues. Constantin Film, the production company behind Downfall (Der Untergang in German) have asserted their copyright over the Downfall footage and YouTube’s automated system appears to be pulling the clips down all over their service. I’d like to think everyone will be filing counter-claims since this is clearly Fair Use according to US copyright law (how could this not be parody or satire?) but we’ll have to see what happens. (An Open Video Alliance post notes that the”videos were blocked by YouTube’s Content ID system, not taken down via DMCA notices”). Meanwhile, until it disappears, here’s Hitler’s thoughts on the Downfall videos disappearing.
- Facebook Further Reduces Your Control Over Personal Information [Electronic Frontier Foundation] – EFA on Facebook’s advertiser-orientated, privacy-diminishing strategies: “Today, Facebook removed its users’ ability to control who can see their own interests and personal information. Certain parts of users’ profiles, “including your current city, hometown, education and work, and likes and interests” will now be transformed into “connections,” meaning that they will be shared publicly. If you don’t want these parts of your profile to be made public, your only option is to delete them. […] The new connections features benefit Facebook and its business partners, with little benefit to you. But what are you going to do about it? Facebook has consistently ignored demands from its users to create an easy “exit plan” for migrating their personal data to another social networking website, even as it has continued — one small privacy policy update after another — to reduce its users’ control over their information. The answer: Let Facebook hear your frustration.”
- More Changes to Facebook Privacy, and More to Come [Social Hacking] – “… Facebook is changing the “Become a Fan” buttons to “Like” buttons. If you want to connect with a page for something you’re interested in, you now will simply “like” the page. In a blog post, Facebook spun the connections as an exciting improvement: “Instead of just boring text, these connections are actually Pages, so your profile will become immediately more connected to the places, things and experiences that matter to you.” I can see three main reasons why Facebook would make this change, and none of them involve text being boring. […] First, this helps software more easily process your interests. […] Second, the shift to “liking” reduces friction. The semantics may be subtle, but I’m sure Facebook has done research on this. “Liking” implies a simple, casual gesture […] Third, this increases the useful data Facebook can offer to others.”
Also, since a few people asked, I’ve used Feedburner to allow email subscriptions here, so if you want an email each time this blog is updated, click here and pop your email address in the ‘Subscribe by email …’ widget on the right.
Tama Leaver dot Net by Tama Leaver is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.