What Google And Facebook Get Wrong About Self Expression And Identity
Google and Facebook would have you believe that you’re a mirror, that there is one reflection that you have, this one idea of self. But in fact we’re more like diamonds, you can look at people from any angle and see something totally different.
4chan founder Chris Poole discusses the problem with personal identity as conceived by Facebook and Google. Basically, that they expect us to maintain a single, consistent persona throughout life, which is not how we actually exist:
Why “Real Names” Policies Are Wrong
Google Plus’s decision to kill off accounts that are not “real names” follows a broader online trend of websites requiring users to utilize their birth names rather than “LimpBizkitDude69″. The idea is that this will make people more “responsible”. But in addition to its being a longstanding internet tradition, there are legitimate and important reasons why people use online pseudonyms. Apophenia compiled a bunch:
“I’ve been stalked. I’m a rape survivor. I am a government employee that is prohibited from using my IRL.”
“I am a high school teacher, privacy is of the utmost importance.”
“I have used this name/account in a work context, my entire family know this name and my friends know this name. It enables me to participate online without being subject to harassment that at one point in time lead to my employer having to change their number so that calls could get through.”
“I do not feel safe using my…
Follow The White House On Foursquare
Want to know where Obama is? The White House has joined foursquare. You can now follow the president as he checks in Lower Hannah’s Bend Park, Seed Saver’s Exchange and, most recently, Northeast Iowa Community College. Via Information Week:
The White House has joined the Foursquare location-based social networking service, a move that shows again the Obama administration’s support of a more transparent and tech-savvy federal government.
Users of the service–which allows people to virtually “check in” to various businesses, landmarks, and other locations around the globe–can now use the White House Foursquare page to follow President Obama as he travels and uses the service to let people know where he is, according to a White House blog post.
They also can themselves check in to the White House if they are visiting the presidential home or attending an Obama town hall event. The White House also has elected to use the tips feature,…
UK May Block Facebook And Twitter To Quell Riots
Following another night of disorder in a country beset by deep inequality, corruption in the halls of power, and scant opportunity for young adults, the conservative regime in Bahrain has threatened to cut off access to social networking websites until the unrest subsides. Oh sorry — this is the news from England. Via Raw Story:
In a move that calls to mind the start of the most serious unrest in nations across the Middle East over the last year, David Cameron, Britain’s prime minister, told Parliament Thursday that authorities may shut down social media websites like Facebook and Twitter, in hopes that it would return calm to their streets.
The remarks came one day after British authorities discussed turning off the messaging function on BlackBerry phones, which they suggested may remove a tool protesters and rioters were using.
“Everyone watching these horrific actions will be struck by how they were organized via social…
Get A Bot To Live As You Online
rep.licants.org enables you to hand over control of your Facebook or Twitter account to a bot that simulates your speech patterns, personality, and interests. Your online friendships and connections will be maintained and even enriched and expanded, while you get to play outside in the sunshine:
rep.licants.org is a web service allowing users to install an artificial intelligence (bot) on their Facebook and/or Twitter account. From keywords, content analysis and activity analysis, the bot attempts to simulate the activity of the user, to improve it by feeding his account and to create new contacts with other users.
Social networks are the first medium showing the social success of a person via a statistical way (eg number of friends on Facebook or followers on Twitter). For many users, reaching the hoped-for success can become a tough and difficult task. Especially when some human factors such as shyness, introversion or personal worth are present.
The bot does…
Facebook And The Destruction Of Innocence In Computing
The computer history blog ASCII lays out the meaning of Facebook in the grand scheme of things:
Facebook is the third of what is probably a quartet (or quintet) of the destruction of the innocence of computing. First was viruses, second was malware, third is facebook. I suspect fourth will be related to control of networking itself, and fifth will be licensing of high level computer ability. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Facebook is a living computer nightmare. Just as viruses took the advantages of sharing information on floppies and modems and revealed a devastating undercarriage to the whole process, making every computer transaction suspect… and just as spyware/malware took advantage of beautiful advances in computer strength and horsepower to turn your beloved machine of expression into a gatling gun of misery and assholery… Facebook now stands as taking over a decade and a half of the dream of the World…
Anonymous Launches Social Networking Site: AnonPlus
AnonPlus is to be a new social networking site without censorship, but how different is it from other social networks? The Raw Story reports:
Infamous hacker group Anonymous launched Monday its own social network after being rejected by Google’s freshly-launched online community.
“Today we welcome you to begin anew,” the hacker alliance said at the website anonplus.com, which it described as a platform to distribute information.
“Welcome to the Revolution – a new social network where there is no fear…of censorship…of blackout…nor of holding back.”
The drive to build a social network came after the Anonymous account was suspended at the Google+ online community, which was launched last month by the Internet giant as a challenge to Facebook.
A message on the anonplus.com website promised that the Anonymous social network would be for everyone and listed online monikers of developers taking part in the project.
Fox News Twitter Account Gets Hacked Announcing President Obama’s Assassination
With instant access to knowledge via technology, it’s easy to get the wrong news. While some hackers may expose a private tweet or e-mail, others create fake news, like the assassination of the American president. Los Angeles Times reports:
Former Rep. Anthony Weiner falsely said his Twitter account was hacked just before Memorial Day weekend. But over the holiday weekend, it looks like real hackers attacked the @foxnewspolitics verified account, one of several Twitter accounts run by FoxNews.com.
A group calling itself “ScriptKiddies” claimed responsibility for the hack and also declared it has ties to the international hacker collective Anonymous.
The Tweets began appearing just after 2 a.m. ET on Monday, July 4, an hour and date likely calculated to maximize the time the Tweets were up before the account owner noticed or could do anything about it. The fake messages announced the assassination of President Obama during a visit to Iowa, but there were no…
Social Networking Surpasses Porn As Top Internet Activity
“My theory is that young users spend so much time on social networks that they don’t have time to look at adult sites.”
Reuters claims that social media has overtaken porn as the primary reason for having an internet connection. (My advice: If you want to make a fortune, figure out a good way of combining the two.)
Bill Tancer, general manager of global research at Hitwise, an Internet tracking company, has analyzed information for over 10 million web users to conclude that one of the major shifts in Internet use in the past decade had been the fall off in interest in pornography or adult entertainment sites.
He said surfing for porn had dropped to about 10 percent of searches from 20 percent a decade ago, and the hottest Internet searches now are for social networking sites.
“As social networking traffic has increased, visits to porn sites have decreased,” said Tancer, indicated that the…
Google Launches Latest Social Network: Google+
It seems when you get tired of one social networking site another appears. Google+ is the new answer for those of you who are tired of Facebook, or just enjoy creating new online profiles of yourself. Via Mashable:
Google has finally unveiled Google+, the company’s top secret social layer that turns all of the search engine into one giant social network.
Google+, which begins rolling out a very limited field test on Tuesday, is the culmination of a year-long project led by Vic Gundotra, Google’s senior vice president of social. The project, which has been delayed several times, constitutes Google’s answer to Facebook.
The search giant’s new social project will be omnipresent on its products, thanks to a complete redesign of the navigation bar. The familiar gray strip at the top of every Google page will turn black, and come with several new options for accessing your Google+ profile, viewing notifications and instantly sharing…
Pope Sends His First Tweet Via iPad
Pope Benedict XVI has posted his first tweet! The pope has gone digital, announcing the launch of the new site www.news.va, so the world can keep up with what’s going on at the Vatican.
Facebook Users Are More Trusting Than Other People
Has the internet in general and Facebook in particular ushered in a golden age in which we better understand, trust, and connect with our neighbors? The Pew Internet & American Life Project writes:
When we control for demographic factors, we find that there is a significant relationship between trust and the use of Facebook – not other social networking sites. A Facebook user who uses the service multiple times per day is 43% more likely than other internet users, or three times (3.07x) more likely than a non-internet user, to feel that “most people can be trusted.”
When we control for demographic factors, we find that internet users are significantly more likely to trust most people. Controlling for demographic factors, internet users are more than twice as likely (2.14x) to think that most people can be trusted.
To get a measure of how much trust people have in their fellow citizens, we asked people:…
French Media Ban The Mention Of Specific Social Networks On Air
In an attempt to reduce the amount of ‘free publicity’ given to social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, the French have banned any mention of specific sites in their TV and radio broadcasts. One of the reasons for this ban is to allow a fair platform for smaller networking companies in the future. BBC News reports:
French TV and radio presenters have been banned from mentioning social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter on air.
The country’s broadcasting watchdog has ruled that doing so would break guidelines on advertising.
Stations can still talk about services without naming them, it said.
The French government is seen by many internet watchers as overly keen to regulate in relation to new media and the web.
In a ruling, published online, the Conseil Superieur de l’Audiovisuel (CSA), said: “Referring viewers or listeners to the page of the social network without mentioning it has the character of information.
[Continues at…
How To Disappear Completely
CSO interviews skip tracer Frank Ahearn about how to vanish from society, skipping off to a tropical island or a clean start in North Dakota, if you don’t want to be found. The key is to put out a flood of misinformation:
You can’t legally change an identity. Identities are kind of this myth. Where do you get one from? And how do you know where it’s from and that it hasn’t been given to fifty other people? Who knows if it’s on the Megan’s Law list or if it belongs to someone who owes the IRS $100,000?
But sometimes you can open a corporation, depending on what you do, and work on a 1099. So, what we do in a nutshell, is make you a virtual entity where you work for this corporation. You lease your apartment through this corporation, your electricity, your phone. Everything about you exists under the corporation. The…
YouTube Launches ‘Town Hall’
Time to trade in your soap box for a viral video. The Raw Story reports:
YouTube on Wednesday launched a “Town Hall” website at which US congressional leaders address issues in brief videos and viewers get to show which positions they support.
Republicans monopolized top slots in a “leaderboard” at the online forum for debating topics from energy and debt to health care and Afghanistan.
However, rankings were shifting quickly at the freshly launched website designed to let top US politicians indirectly debate important issues and then have viewers vote for preferred positions.
While the people in the videos are identified, their party affiliations are not revealed until after a viewer has chosen a side.
“How would you vote if you focused purely on the ideas needed to make our country and our world a better place, rather than on the parties putting them forward?” Will Houghteling of YouTube News and Politics asked in a blog…
Facebook And Google Team Up To Oppose Privacy Legislation
There may be bad blood after last week’s revelation that Facebook has been trying secretly to inject smear stories about Google into the media, but the two internet giants can join together on the most important issues, writes the Atlantic Wire:
Facebook, Google, Twitter, Skype and others cosigned a letter “strongly opposing” a bill introduced by California State Senator Ellen Corbett that would force sites to explain privacy settings in “plain language.”
Her recently introduced Social Networking Privacy Act (SB 242) would require a notice before users hand over their personal information to a site. In Sen. Corbett’s own words, “You shouldn’t have to sign in and give up your personal information before you get to the part where you say, ‘Please don’t share my personal information.” The bill would also grant parents the right to request photos or text be removed from any of their children’s social networking pages within 48…
Ten Years From Now, Facebook Will Be Your Bank
“Why is its important to have a Facebook profile? They are going to start using that to determine what your credit worthiness is.”
The tin-foil-hatted nuts at BusinessWeek explain how and why Facebook will become the largest bank in the United States. (Perhaps most disturbing is the thought of a universal currency called ‘the zuckerberg’.)
Becoming a financial powerhouse would help Facebook avoid the fate of many once-popular networks. AOL, Friendster, Second Life, and MySpace all dreamed of growing forever, too. To survive, Facebook must become more than glorified e-mail. Sharing photos and gossip with friends might make Facebook hard to leave. But upload your checking account and Facebook may just be forever.
Nongamers may have missed Facebook’s clever foray into the world of “virtual currency,” where Facebook Credits cost 10 cents each and can be exchanged for game points or cartoony gifts. Those dimes are adding up—the U.S. market for virtual goods will…
Bin Laden Tweeter Becomes Internet Sensation
Abbottabad, Pakistan, from Shimla Hill. Photo: Fraz.khalid1
Without realizing, Sohaid Athar tweeted about the attacks on Osama bin Laden from the comforts of his suburban home in Abbottabad. Athar began tweeting his complaints about the noise disturbance from helicopters he heard about his home. After a few tweets, Athar and his followers began connecting the information of non-Pakistani helicopters and loud, vibrating, sounds in the area to the reported assassination of bin Laden. Athar was the first on the internet to publish real-time updates on the attack. Via The Raw Story:
An IT consultant who hoped for a quiet life in a summer resort town in Pakistan has become an Internet sensation as the first to report the attack on the world’s most wanted man.
Sohaib Athar was just another witty voice on micro-blogging site Twitter until he heard the sound of helicopters near his home in a Abbottabad, 30 miles (50 kilometres) north…
Technology Addiction Taking Its Toll
After getting a smart phone last year, I too feel the effects of technology addiction. It snuck up on me. I now feel like I spend a large portion of my day moving from one of three screens: my television, laptop, and cellphone. I find myself checking my collection of news sites and blogs, as well as my social networks quite often throughout the day. I’d say at least once an hour, if not more. While it has opened up many doors to knowledge and communication it also makes me wonder what exactly the implications of such a lifestyle change will have on my generation’s future mentality and health. Keeping a phone in my pocket right next to my…sensitive areas? We’re the guinea pigs to the virtual future.
Anybody else a little cautious about the 21st Century level of connectedness? Share your views down in the comments. Discovery News reports:
Many young Asians…
