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Digital Culture Links: September 21st 2009
Links for September 18th 2009 through September 21st 2009:
- RIP Facebook Beacon [Mashable] – “Facebook launched its ad platform “Beacon” in Nov 2007, hoping to revolutionize advertising by posting updates to your Facebook profile when you interacted with its partner sites. This week Facebook said that it has settled a class-action lawsuit against the product, agreed to shut it down completely, and will establish a $9.5 million “settlement fund” to fund initiatives related to online privacy. … Facebook Beacon was a system that posted your activity on third-party websites – Blockbuster, Gamefly, Overstock.com and more – back to your Facebook profile. Privacy advocates rallied against it, however, arguing that data was being sent without the users’ explicit permission. The situation worsened after a report claimed that Beacon was collecting data from partner sites regardless of whether users were Facebook members …” (Beacon remains one of those most teachable examples of Facebook’s privacy woes, but I’m delighted with the idea of money being spent privacy initiatives.)
- Nigeria ‘offended’ by sci-fi film [BBC NEWS | Africa] – “Nigeria’s government is asking cinemas to stop showing a science fiction film, District Nine, that it says denigrates the country’s image. Information Minister Dora Akunyili told the BBC’s Network Africa programme that she had asked the makers of the film, Sony, for an apology. She says the film portrays Nigerians as cannibals, criminals and prostitutes. An actor from the film said that it was not just Nigerians who were portrayed as villains. … But Mr Khumbanyiwa said Nigerians in the cast did not seem worried by the portrayal of their country. He suggested that the film, which depicts people wanting to eat aliens to gain the superhuman powers, should not be taken too literally. “It’s a story, you know,” he said. “It’s not like Nigerians do eat aliens. Aliens don’t even exist in the first place.”” (Well said, Mr Khumbanyiwa, well said.)
- Welcome to the (anonymous) rabbit hole [Unleashed] – Mark Pesce’s playful take on the largely unsuccessful attempts by Anonymous to take down the ACMA and Australian Prime Minster’s websites on 09/09/09/
- VICTORY: FCC to Mandate Net Neutrality for the Web [Mashable] – “The Federal Communications Commission has been in the middle of it, as it has outlined loose net neutrality guidelines in the past. But according to The Wall Street Journal, the FCC is about to propose definitive rules that could have major repercussions for the entire web. The new rules, expected to be announced Monday by Julius Genachowski, the FCC Chairman, will outline requirements for ISPs to treat all traffic on the Internet equally. This means that Comcast can’t decide that Google gets less bandwidth and Microsoft/Bing (Bing) gets more for any reason (i.e. one pays for preferential treatment). It’s also expected that the net neutrality rules will apply to wireless services, meaning they would be in effect for Internet data via your phone and 3G networks. The impact of this cannot be understated, especially as iPhones and other smart phones make the mobile web a major part of our lives.” (Excellent!)
- Google slams Murdoch plan to charge for online news [The Age] – “Publishers of general news would find it hard to charge for their content online because too much free content is available, the chief executive of Google said. Speaking to a group of British broadcasting executives via video link, Eric Schmidt said he could, however, imagine niche providers of content such as business news succeeding in this area. Schmidt was responding to an announcement by News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch that he could start charging for content online. “In general these models have not worked for general public consumption because there are enough free sources that the marginal value of paying is not justified based on the incremental value of quantity,” he said. “So my guess is for niche and specialist markets … it will be possible to do it but I think it is unlikely that you will be able to do it for all news.””
- Meme Analysis: Kanye Interrupts, the Internet (and Obama) Listens [NewTeeVee] – Everything you ever wanted to know about the Kayne West interrrupts Taylor Swift meme …
Annotated Digital Culture Links: March 11th 2009
Links for March 10th 2009 through March 11th 2009:
- Video: Truly Uncut – A Complete Common Craft Video Shoot [Common Craft – Explanations In Plain English] – How many stop-motion shots goes into the average Common Craft ‘in plain English’ video … an awful lot, it seems!
- Bangladesh imposes YouTube block [BBC NEWS | South Asia] – “The video-sharing web site YouTube has been blocked by Bangladesh after a recording of a meeting between the PM and army officers was posted. The meeting took place two days after a mutiny by border guards in Dhaka that left more than 70 people dead. The recordings cover about 40 minutes of a three-hour meeting and reveal how angry many in the military were at the government’s handling of the crisis. YouTube had been blocked in the “national interest”, officials said.”
- Know Your Meme: Boxxy [Rocketboom] – Rocketboom take a detailed look at the Boxxy meme and 4chan’s micro-civil war. Good stuff on memes in general.
- Ewan McGregor twitchy over fake Twitter site [The Guardian] – “Spare a thought for the 19,639 subscribers to Ewan McGregor’s Twitter feed. For the past four months they have been treated to regular updates of the actor’s daily routine. When McGregor was “about to enjoy banana pancakes”, they were kept informed. When he “needed some Tylenol extra strength”, they were told about that too. Now comes the most alarming revelation of all: representatives of the actor claim that the Twitter site and its related MySpace profile are actually run by impostors. “Ewan McGregor does not have a Twitter site or one on MySpace either,” insisted a spokesperson for the Trainspotting star. “Someone is just making it all up.”” (Which would, I’d imagine, be easy enough to do!)
Annotated Digital Culture Links: February 20th 2009
Links for February 17th 2009 through February 20th 2009:
- 4chan /b/ goes after cat abusers, wins [Inquisitr] – “A video of two men abusing a cat surfaced on YouTube late last week, and members of /b/ took it upon themselves to bring the sickos to justice. The video was quickly narrowed down to prime suspects, primarily through the help of /b/, and local authorities arrested the men. Many have been quick to criticize /b/ in the past, but today at least you can’t doubt one thing: they love cats.” (While this doesn’t suddenly make /b/ a haven of good will and public mindedness, it does show that with the proper motivation 4chan can be a powerful force!)
- Macroanonymous Is The New Microfamous [Fimoculous.com] – “…I interviewed the founder of 4chan for a magazine story that never ended up running. He chatted about everything from the techincal complexities of keeping 4chan alive to the anxieties of operating the most controversial site on the internet. By the end of the interview, I was thinking “This kid has seen stuff that would make my eyes burn, but he seems so smart and sweet about it all.” (He started the site when he was 15; he just turned 21.) It seemed like insightful stuff that should run somewhere, so here it is….”
- Whisper campaigns exposed: pay per lie on YouTube [The Age] – “One of Australia’s most popular YouTube users has admitted being paid to spruik Ten’s new show Lie To Me surreptitiously in the latest example of marketers invading the popular video sharing site. Amateur video maker Hugh Thomas, 26, from Bondi, said he was asked by a mystery third party to create a video blog on Lie To Me and publish it on his popular YouTube channel, in return for payment from 20th Century Fox. He would not give more details of the whisper campaign, saying he was bound by a non-disclosure agreement.”
Annotated Digital Culture Links: January 20th 2009
Links for January 19th 2009 through January 20th 2009:
- “Taken Out of Context: American Teen Sociality in Networked Publics” by danah boyd (Phd Thesis, 2.1Mb PDF) – “Abstract: As social network sites like MySpace and Facebook emerged, American teenagers began adopting them as spaces to mark identity and socialize with peers. Teens leveraged these sites for a wide array of everyday social practices – gossiping, flirting, joking around, sharing information, and simply hanging out. While social network sites were predominantly used by teens as a peer-based social outlet, the unchartered nature of these sites generated fear among adults. This dissertation documents my 2.5-year ethnographic study of American teens’ engagement with social network sites and the ways in which their participation supported and complicated three practices – self-presentation, peer sociality, and negotiating adult society.”
- Facebook irked by ‘burger for friends’ campaign [The Age] – “Burger King said Friday that pressure from Facebook has caused it to yank an application that gave members of the hot social networking website a Whopper for every 10 friends they dumped. Before the Whopper Sacrifice Campaign was halted, 233,906 friends were “sacrificed” by Facebook users more interested in relationships with the global fast-food chain’s specialty hamburgers, according to Burger King. … Changes sought by Facebook reportedly included ditching an application feature that sent deleted friends messages informing them that an online pal preferred a hamburger over them.”
- The Boxxy Story – From the 4chan meme factory, the story of Boxxy, whose hyperactive YouTube antics caused a hormone-driven civil war, taking her from a micro-meme to the Queen /b/
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