embracing apparent contradictions, diversity and change
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This morning when I went to log in to a discussion forum on Yuku (“your interests, your communities” — the next-generation, friend-enabled version of ezboard), I was greeted with:
Our terms of service has changed. Please read the new terms of service. By clicking “I agree,” you agree to Yuku’s Terms of Use.
Oh, they has* changed, has they? What changes might those be?
Update on February 22: How to respond when Facebook censors your political speech is up on Tales from the Net and Wired’s How-to Wiki and links back to comments in this thread. Alas, the Facebook Barack Obama discussion board was deleted on February 20, so many of the links here go off to oblivion.
If you are doing political activism on Facebook and you’re getting warned as a spammer — or if your account has been disabled for engaging in political speech — please leave a comment here or on the Wired Wiki page. Thanks!
February 19: another account was deactivated with less than one hour notice. I’m getting flagged by Facebook’s automated filters for posting info about how to find polling locations. (Okay, I posted it twice, an hour apart. Still.) It’s not pretty. More soon.
From Moderator’s closing statement in The Economist’s debate on social networking technologies in education:
I also admired the interventions from JON PINCUS, who pointed out that supporters of the motion underestimated “the risks that the new technologies will in practice reinforce (rather than counter) existing negative biases and trends in the educational system”. He also thought that opponents of the motion were “generalising from very limited experience with social networking technologies—and don’t seem to view this as a problem.”
Both of these points strike me as useful, and true. I would only add that I suspect many supporters of the motion have been generalising from limited experience, too.
I don’t have a lot of experience with the Oxford Debate 2.0 format they’re using. Does this mean I get to say “hi mom”?
After taking a couple of months fairly completely off (sleeping, doing some writing, and plenty of hanging out with Deborah), as January gets going I’m starting to re-engage, so I figured it’s about time for another “what’s up” post….
The biggest news is that I’m going to be starting a consulting gig in early February. Before we get to that, though, I want to put it in context: my top priorities for 2008 are working on Tales from the Net — we want to get a solid draft done and a contract in place by the end of the year — and training to to climb Mount Kilamanjaro in early 2009. Yes, really.
Personal
Professional
Tales from the Net
Comments Off on What’s up with me, mid-January edition
Other than the title, which doesn’t do it for me, Caroline McCarthy’s Social networking gets its geek on is an excellent short roundup of the activity in 2007 in the social networking space, with great links both in the story and the “2007 highlights” sidebar.
One thing that popped out at me: legal and political issues crop up in five of the ten paragraphs (the lawsuit related to Facebook’s origins, Digg and the DMCA takedown notice, the state attorneys general pressuring MySpace on sex offenders, MySpace and MTV’s “presidential dialogs”, and of course the Beacon brouhaha). OK, the first one is fairly standard startup stuff, but the others clearly illustrate social networks’ increasingly important role in society. So I though Caroline’s closing paragraph was particularly insightful, and applies much more broadly than the specific sites and issue:
Not surprisingly, privacy and safety issues remained on the horizon. Both Facebook and MySpace grappled with demands from state attorneys general who were concerned that young people could be exposing themselves to online threats through social networks. Their efforts didn’t do much to stall either site, but served as a continual reminder that even though Silicon Valley might tout a company as the future of communication, legal authorities might beg to differ.
Indeed. With the McCain bill still lurking out there (it didn’t make it out of committee in 2007, but 2008’s an election year) and the Mcarthyesque “Violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism prevention act of 2007” having already passed the House, it’s clear that at least in the US, the potential democratizing and empowering effects of social networks are leading to predictable backlash from entrenched interests. The good news is that people are rapidly learning how to use social networks for activism, so any crackdown is likely to meet with a lot more resistance than expected. I hope.
political
social computing
Tales from the Net
Comments Off on CNet’s “social networking year in review”
The two months since I left Microsoft have been low-key recharge-and-relax time: catching up on sleep, visiting my mom, reconnecting with friends, doing some writing (blogging, poetry, the fictional The anomaly and the goddesses), and hanging out with Deborah. It’s been great. My friends consistently tell me how relaxed I look and sound (my Facebook status messages apparently give the same impression), and that’s exactly how I feel.