Tag: Social Media

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Wind on a Leaf: Dear startups and other relevant parties: It’s 2012. It is no longer ok to

chartier:

  • Not offer a way to download our data in some sort of a standard, transparent, and at least somewhat human-siftable format
  • Hide or otherwise be opaque about precisely what personal data you smuggle out of our devices
  • Not offer a one-to-two-click process for deleting our accounts
  • Fail to actually remove our data from your servers after we delete our accounts (while complying with applicable regional laws governing data retention)
  • Believe that taking VC and selling your customers’s private information is the only way to get a company off the ground, let alone run a successful business
  • Not use SSL for passing even the slightest bit of private information

Did I miss anything?

One thing: use rhetoric and spin to try and convince users that rabidly anti-consumer practices (such as those noted above) are good for society and that this kind of ‘radical transparency’ (i.e. screwing the customer for the benefit of the bottom line) is somehow going to make the world a better and happier place.

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Writing

Making Sense of Twitter ‘Censorship’

Jillian York, the Director of International Freedom of Expression at the EFF, has a good (and quick) thought on Twitter’s recent decision to ‘censor’ some Tweets in particular geographical areas.

Let’s be clear: This is censorship. There’s no way around that. But alas, Twitter is not above the law.  Just about every company hosting user-generated content has, at one point or another, gotten an order or government request to take down content.  Google lays out its orders in its Transparency Report.  Other companies are less forthright.  In any case, Twitter has two options in the event of a request: Fail to comply, and risk being blocked by the government in question, or comply (read: censor).  And if they have “boots on the ground”, so to speak, in the country in question?  No choice.

In the event that a company chooses to comply with government requests and censor content, there are a number of mitigating steps the company can take.  The most important, of course, is transparency, something that Twitter has promised.  Google is also transparent in its content removal (Facebook? Not so much).  Twitter’s move to geolocate their censorship is also smart, given the alternative (censoring it worldwide, that is) – particularly since it appears a user can manually change his or her location.

I tend to agree with her position. I’m not particularly happy that Twitter is making this move but can appreciate that from an Internet governance – and national sovereignty – position that Twitter’s new policy ‘fits’ with international practices. Further, the company’s unwillingness to globally censor is positive, and limits that damage caused by state-mandated censorship.

Admittedly, I’d like to see the company go a bit further that is in line with their drive towards transparency. Perhaps if you did a keyword search in a particular geographic area you might receive a notice reading, “Some items in this search have been censored in your region” or something along those lines. Still, Twitter is arguably the best ‘good’ company that is prominent in the social networking environment at the moment, so I’ll hope they make additional steps towards full transparency rather than lambasting the company for its policy changes right now.

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The stranger danger: Exploring Surveillance, Autonomy and Privacy in Children’s Use of Social Media

A really terrific paper on social media and ‘stranger danger’. You should read it.

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Real-Life Examples Of How Google’s “Search Plus” Pushes Google+ Over Relevancy

Pretty well required reading at the moment if you’re interested in the consequences of Google integrating their own social products into their search results. I’d really recommend reading the whole thing but, if not, at least take a glance at Danny Sullivan’s takeaway:

 It’s not Google’s job to be sticking it to anyone with its search results. Those results are supposed to be showing what are the most relevant things for searchers out there. That’s how Google wins. That’s how Google sticks it to competitors, by not trying to play favorites in those results, nor by trying to punish people through them.

The Google+ suggestions are indeed search results, to me. Right now, they’re search results on who to follow on Google+. I think they could be better search results if they were who to follow on any social network, anywhere.