Quotulatiousness

November 7, 2011

Charles Stross on “evil social networks”

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:29

You could say that Charles Stross isn’t a fan of social networks in general, and Klout in particular:

“If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.”

In the past I’ve fulminated about various social networking systems. The basic gist is this: the utility of a social network to any given user is proportional to the number of users it has. So all social networks are designed to tweak that part of the primate brain that gets a dopamine reward from social activity — we are, after all, social animals. But providing a service to millions of customers is expensive, and your typical internet user is a cheapskate who has become accustomed to free services. So most social networks don’t charge their users; they are funded indirectly, which means they’ve got to sell something, and what they’ve got to sell is data about your internet usage habits, which is of interest to advertisers.

So the ideal social network (from an investor’s point of view) is one that presents itself as being free-to-use, is highly addictive, uses you as bait to trap your friends, tracks you everywhere you go on the internet, sells your personal information to the highest bidder, and is impossible to opt out of. Sounds like a cross between your friendly neighbourhood heroin pusher, Amway, and a really creepy stalker, doesn’t it?

So what is it about Klout that sets it apart from the other social networks?

Klout operates under American privacy law, or rather, the lack of it. If you created a Klout account in the past, you were unable to delete it short of sending legal letters (until November 1st, when they kindly added an “opt out” mechanism). More to the point, Klout analyse your social graph and create accounts for all your contacts without asking them for prior consent. It also appears to use an unwitting user’s Twitter or FB credentials to post updates on their Klout scores, prompting the curious-but-ignorant to click on a link to Klout, whereupon they will be offered a chance to log in with their Facebook or Twitter credentials. So it spreads like herpes and it’s just as hard to get rid of. Is that all?

[. . .]

Anyway: if you sign up for Klout you are coming down with the internet equivalent of herpes. Worse, you risk infecting all your friends. Klout’s business model is flat-out illegal in the UK (and, I believe, throughout the EU) and if you have an account with them I would strongly advise you to delete it and opt out; if you’re in the UK you could do worse than send them a cease-and-desist plus a request to delete all your data, then follow up a month later with a Freedom of Information Act request.

October 19, 2011

Supreme Court rules that linking to defamatory material is not libel

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:03

The Supreme Court of Canada makes the common sense ruling:

Hyperlinking to defamatory material on the internet does not constitute publishing the defamatory material itself, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled Wednesday.

The ruling will alleviate fears that holding someone liable for how they use hyperlinks on websites, personal ones or others, could cast a chill on internet use.

The responsible use of the internet and how traditional defamation law applies to modern technologies were at issue in this case, which was watched closely by media organizations and civil liberties groups.

How someone can protect their reputation in the internet age when content is passed around with the quick click of a button was also considered in the case. On social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter, users often share links, and the court’s ruling could have dramatically disrupted that function had it gone the other way.

In its unanimous decision, the court said a hyperlink, by itself, should never be considered “publication” of the content to which it refers. But that doesn’t mean internet users shouldn’t be careful about how they present links. The court says that if someone presents content from the hyperlinked material in a way that repeats the defamatory content, they can be considered publishers and are therefore at risk of being sued for defamation.

October 13, 2011

The war on photography continues: Glasgow shopping mall front

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Liberty — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:03

Nick Thorne recounts the over-reaction of mall security (and the local police) to an alleged incident of photography at the Braehead Shopping Centre in Glasgow:

It took a high-profile internet campaign to get a shopping-centre chain to reconsider its irrational photography policy. After security guards at Glasgow’s Braehead Shopping Centre stopped Chris White from taking a picture of his own four-year-old daughter, White set up a Facebook page called ‘Boycott Braehead’. In just three days it was ‘liked’ by over 20,000 people. Capital Shopping Centres has now announced that 11 of its malls will from now on allow family and friends to take pictures of each other.

So, parents can now take snaps of their kids eating ice cream, like White did, without worrying about security guards telling them they’re committing an offence, as White was told, or being taken away for questioning by cops who threaten to use anti-terror powers to take snappers’ cameras away, like an officer warned White. That’s splendid.

White’s Facebook campaign went viral and Braehead Shopping Centre was forced to apologise for its overreaction. Common sense won the day. But why was the photography policy implemented in the first place? And why was an innocent, everyday occurrence interpreted as a potentially dodgy, abusive incident?

A statement from the shopping centre explained that staff had become suspicious ‘after they saw a male shopper taking photographs of a child sitting at their counter’. The security guard who went over to investigate said that he had at no point been informed that the girl was White’s daughter. The automatic assumption, it seems, was that a man taking a picture of a child must be some sleazy scumbag.

October 9, 2011

Is this the beginning of the end for Bernard Berrian as a Viking?

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:56

Tom Pelissero has the story:

Minnesota Vikings wide receiver Bernard Berrian was a surprise inactive for Sunday’s game against the Arizona Cardinals at the Metrodome.

Cornerback Antoine Winfield also was inactive, but that doesn’t come as a surprise given that he did not practice last week because of a neck injury. Chris Kluwe, who was bothered by a hamstring injury and missed two days of practice last week, will handle the punting duties for the 0-4 Vikings.

Berrian was not listed on the injury report during the week and although he has only two receptions this season, the move almost certainly comes as punishment for Berrian’s exchange on Twitter last Sunday with Rep. John Kriesel, R-Cottage Grove.

[. . .]

Frazier clearly was not pleased and made that clear on Monday.

“I have talked to Bernard and we do … matter of fact Bob (Hagan, the Vikings director of public relations) and some of our PR people actually talk with our team once we come to training camp,” Frazier said. “Just about social media and what our relationship should be with social media.

“It’s something we’ve talked about, something we’ll continue to deal with and talk about. Bernard kind of knows where we stand on that issue and we’ll move on from there. … We want to make sure that our focus is on football and trying to win football games. I think going forward he’ll handle things the right way.”

September 13, 2011

QotD: Responding to the “Climate Reality Project”

Filed under: Environment, Humour, Media, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:13

Today begins the 72-hour observance of the Climate Reality Project’s “24 hours of reality” info-event on the so-called “climate crisis” on Facebook and Twitter. I know, I know. Why call it “24 hours of reality” when you’re going to spend 72 hours doing it? Because SHUT UP YOU DENIALIST NAZI SYMPATHIZER!

I’m not on Twitter, but let me share what I’ve communicated to my friends on Facebook:

If ANYONE allows that fat bastard access to their Facebook account in order to spam me with their “THE SKY IS FALLING AND IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT, WINGNUTZ” crap; not only will I de-friend you and refuse to speak to your dumb ass strictly out of principle, I solemnly vow that I will mail a LIVE OPOSSUM to your house in a big box full of styrofoam peanuts.

LIVE. OPOSSUM.

Please don’t test me. I’m serious here. Much like me, live opossums don’t care about fake science. They’re more interested in breaking stuff and having panicked bowel movements on the top shelf of your china hutch.

“Russ from Winterset”, “My Response to ‘The Climate Reality Project'”, Ace of Spades H.Q., 2011-09-13

August 18, 2011

The comfortable myth that the London rioters were “incited” by Facebook and Twitter

Filed under: Britain, Law, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:41

Brendan O’Neill points out the absurdity of the notion that the rioters in London and other English cities were organized and co-ordinated by use of social media like Facebook and Twitter:

The nonsense notion that the riot was orchestrated by thugs on social media is exposed in the fact that Twitter and Facebook and BlackBerry Messenger were stuffed with rumour and misinformation during the nights of rioting, rather than with clear instructions for where and how to cause mayhem. The use of social media was secondary to the violence itself, which sprung from the fact that urban youth now seem to have so little moral or emotional attachment to the communities they live in that they are willing to smash them up, and the fact that the police, the so-called guardians of public safety, had no clue how to respond and therefore stood back and let it happen. Incapable even of acknowledging, far less discussing, this combination of urban social malaise and crisis of state authority which inflamed the riots and allowed them to spread, our rulers prefer instead to fantasise that England was simply rocked by opportunists who love a bit of violence. And to fantasise that taking away their BlackBerries or restricting what they can say on Facebook — that is, curtailing youths’ freedom of speech — will make everything okay again.

August 15, 2011

QotD: Trying to look tough once the fight is over

Filed under: Britain, Government, Law, Media, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:05

It’s hard to know which is more pathetic: the short-lived cheap bravado of those looters (which sometimes turned to weeping and wailing in court); or the belated show of phoney toughness from government ministers and police chiefs. The authorities have put on a hardman act in the days since the riot — from staging theatrical police raids to sending chumps to jail for months for stealing chewing gum or bottled water — to try to cover up the institutional impotence they displayed when it mattered, in the middle of the trouble that began in London last week.

The more canny looters wore face masks to hide their true identities. The authorities have now donned an iron mask in a desperate bid to conceal the confusion, fear and moral cowardice in high places that was exposed at the time. Everybody is up in arms about the way that rioters allegedly exploited BBM (Blackberry Messenger) and other social media to promote their illegitimate ‘cause’. The government meanwhile has been busy exploiting the weakness of the MSM (Mainstream Media) to get the dubious message of their ‘fightback’ across to their target audience.

Those braggartly idiots who posed for grinning Facebook photos with their hoard of stolen loot have naturally attracted ridicule and contempt. There has been little or no criticism of the way that the authorities have contrived swaggering media coverage of small armies of riot cops raiding suspected looters’ homes, supposedly to show that they are in control and did not really panic when faced with a few hundred barely organised looters and arsonists.

Mick Hume, “Theatrical ‘fightback’ turns to farce”, Spiked, 2011-08-15

August 11, 2011

You have to wonder why it took them this long

Filed under: Law, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:20

The New York City police department announced that it’s setting up a group to monitor Facebook, Twitter, and other social media in order to detect criminals who are stupid enough to boast about their crimes online:

According to The New York Daily News, freshly-appointed assistant commissioner Kevin O’Connor — styled as the NYPD’s “online and gang guru” — will head the new unit, which will trawl Web 2.0 for information on “troublesome house parties, gang showdowns, and other potential mayhem”.

The idea is to pinpoint net-savvy un-savvy juveniles who divulge their criminal plans on the web or boast about crimes already committed. You might think of them as Idiots 2.0.

In his former post with a north Manhattan gang unit, O’Connor apparently tapped the net for vital information on “a number” of shooting cases. In March, the Daily News says, the NYPD nabbed an eighteen-year-old who was part of a fatal beating after he boasted about the killing on Facebook.

August 8, 2011

China discovers that “You can’t stop the signal” again

Filed under: China, Government, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:32

Strategy Page looks at the way news was disseminated about the high speed rail crash despite the Chinese government’s attempts to quash the story:

Since July 27th, China got another reminder that it no longer can control the news. On July 27th, China’s high-speed “bullet train” had a fatal accident, leaving over 30 dead and many more injured. The cause was inadequate safety and communications systems. In this case, one train was halted by a flaw in the signalling system and another came up from behind and there was the collision that sent four train cars off the tracks, and a bridge. The government immediately tried to keep the accident out of the news. This effort failed because of the ingenuity of Chinese Internet users, despite the government ban on Twitter in China. The ban was meant to impede the rapid spread of news the government wanted to control. Given enough time, the state controlled media could get out a story the government could live with. But blog, RSS and other Internet tools have been tweaked to do the same thing Twitter does. This was especially true of “micro-blogs” that quickly distribute the same 140 character messages Twitter does. Not as well, but good enough, and the news the government wanted to control spread uncontrollably. This included pictures and video of the accident, which the government planned to keep out of the news.

July 25, 2011

More on that Chinese rail crash

Filed under: China, Government, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:49

The official story has changed a few times since the accident, and at least some Chinese feel they are entitled to the truth about the accident:

Internet users attacked the government’s response to the disaster after authorities muzzled media coverage and urged reporters to focus on rescue efforts. “We have the right to know the truth!” wrote one microblogger called kangfu xiaodingdang. “That’s our basic right!”

Leaked propaganda directives ordered journalists not to investigate the causes and footage emerged of bulldozers shovelling dirt over carriages.

Wang, the railways spokesman, said no one could or would bury the story. He said a colleague told him the wreckage was needed to fill in a muddy ditch to make rescue efforts easier.

But Hong Kong University’s China Media Project said propaganda authorities have ordered media not to send reporters to the scene, not to report too frequently and not to link the story to high-speed rail development. “There must be no seeking after the causes [of the accident], rather, statements from authoritative departments must be followed,” said one directive. Another ordered: “No calling into doubt, no development [of further issues], no speculation, and no dissemination [of such things] on personal microblogs!”

July 6, 2011

“Scouring your own Facebook profile for information your friends shared with you is in violation of Facebook’s terms of service”

Filed under: Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 14:55

Facebook really, really doesn’t want you leaving for Google+ — in fact, they don’t even want you looking too closely at your friends’ personal data:

With the introduction of Google+ last week, the search/ad giant is finally in direct competition with Facebook. Or it will be, once Google gets over the opening week willies and reopens the service to allow the teeming hordes inside.

The biggest barrier to Google+’s success? All the time and effort we’ve already put into building our Facebook posses. Personally I am too old and cranky to start over from scratch. I just want to be able to click a button and automatically add everyone from Facebook to Google+.

That is, of course, exactly what Facebook does not want you to do, as an open source developer named Mohamed Mansour just discovered.

[. . .]

As Mansour noted (on his Google+ page, naturally):

     “This is what happens when your extension becomes famous :sigh: Facebook just removed the emails from their mobile site. They implemented a throttling mechanism that if you visit your ~5 friends in a short period of time, it will remove the email field.

     “No worries, a new version is on the making … I am bloody annoyed now, because this proves Facebook owns every users data on Facebook. You don’t own anything! If I were you, I would riot this to the media outlets again.”

It turns out that scouring your own Facebook profile for information your friends shared with you is in violation of Facebook’s terms of service. Nice, eh?

July 4, 2011

Internet absolved of charges

Filed under: Health, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:58

Apparently the smear campaign against the internet — you know, the meme that we were all being turned into morons by video games, social networking sites, and Google — has no factual basis:

Has Google been making us stupid? Are young people nothing but mindless husks, helplessly addicted to Facebook? Is the very internet itself some sort of insidious virus, creeping through the fibre optics, rewiring our brains, deadening neurons, stunting IQs, stymieing human interaction?

You could be forgiven for worrying. You don’t have to go far to read a scare story about what the upsurge in digital life over the past 20 years has apparently done to our brains. Yet help is at hand.

A report released this morning (The impact of digital technologies on human well-being) claims that the internet has actually been the victim of some sort of vicious smear campaign. An analysis of current research by the Nominet Trust, a UK charity dedicated to increasing access to the internet, claims that we’ve really been worrying about nothing all along. Relax, get online and stop worrying, is about the gist of it.

July 1, 2011

Guardian contributer learns not to confuse “sociopathy” with “social network”

Filed under: Britain, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:40

Kia Abdullah will think twice before letting her inner sociopath out on Twitter in future:

In the early hours of Tuesday morning, three young British men were killed in a bus crash in Thailand, just days after starting their gap year travels. A deeply tragic case — and one that will have left many British parents sick with worry. Annually about 100,000 young Brits take gap years.

But here’s a Twitter reaction from Kia Abdullah, a Guardian contributor:

Even if you think this sort of thing, sending it out immediately over Facebook or Twitter is just asking for a landslide of public abuse to land on your head. People who work in media have the least excuse for this kind of absent-minded faux pas, as they often pounce on celebrity or politician errors of exactly this sort.

June 23, 2011

Your social media reputation and your future employment prospects

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:30

Chris Greaves posted this link, which should be a warning to everyone to be (even more) careful about your online reputation:

Camille Cacnio, a part-time receptionist at a car dealership, was caught in a 3-second video clip, stealing clothing from a looted store during the Stanley Cup riots.

She was fired.

Professional mountain biker Alex Prochazka posed in front of a burning car, while wearing a T-shirt from his sponsor Oakley.

The sunglass company promptly dropped him.

Carpenter Connor Mcilvenna declared the riots “awesome” on his Facebook page, and posted several pro-riot status updates, such as “atta boy vancity!!! show em how we do it!!!” and “vancouver needed remodeling anyway….”

RiteTech Construction was listed as his employer on his Facebook profile, and the next morning, Mcilvenna was fired.

His boss said he was flooded with emails and didn’t want the company’s reputation linked to the man.

“I think this will be a turning point in how employers look at social media,” said Peter Eastwood, a partner at Borden Ladner Gervais in Vancouver. “This is an extremely powerful tool that has potentially enormous and immediate consequences for a business.”

This is something the early bloggers had to face, that what you post online (or what is posted about you) will be there forever. No rational employer is going to offer you a job in future without at the very least running a Google search on you, and there’s already a niche market for employers to explore (doing a deeper search on prospective employees). Background check and personal references? I’m starting to wonder why employers even bother going through the motions any more.

June 18, 2011

Is it right to name and shame the Vancouver “fans”?

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 00:08

Ken at Popehat discusses the charges that outing the misbehaving fans on Facebook is somehow “vigilantism”:

Vigilantism: Exposing people to the social consequences of their misbehavior is not vigilantism. Subjecting them to physical danger is. That’s why decent people involved in this process don’t post home addresses or phone numbers, and delete them when they are posted.

Proportionality: The proportionality argument is at least somewhat misguided. First of all, bad behavior doesn’t go viral on the internet unless it’s really notable. Garden-variety assholes don’t get top Google ranking. You’ve got to be somewhat epic to draw this modern infamy — by, say, being a water polo star on a scholarship trying to torch a cop car because your hockey team lost. Second, lack of proportionality is self-correcting. If conduct is actually just not that bad, then future readers who Google a bad actor’s name will review the evidence and say “meh, that’s not so bad. Everyone acts up now and then.” Saying that bad behavior should not be easily accessible on the internet is an appeal for enforced ignorance, a request for a news blackout. It’s saying, in effect, I’m more wise and measured than all the future people who might read about this; they can’t be trusted to evaluate this person’s actions in the right light, like I can.

“They Just Made A Mistake”: The argument that bad actors shouldn’t become infamous because they “just made a mistake” is a riff on proportionality. The same criticisms apply: it takes a hell of a mistake to go viral, and future viewers can make up their own minds. Plus, this argument is often sheer bullshit. Trying to torch a cop car because your hockey team lost is not a mere faux pas; normal and decent people don’t do it.

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