Facebook is now facing a likely federal investigation following the revelation that its cookies can track users Web surfing after they logged out of the world’s most popular social networking site. The worst outcome of such an investigation would be onerous legislation that would stifle innovation.
The call for the Federal Trade Commission to investigate, however, is a positive sign for people who care about privacy and innovation. While the FCC is notorious for seeking to employ powers it does not statutorily possess, the FTC has a long record of judicious use of its power. Regulation of some sort is inevitable in the privacy arena. Best it be a one-stop shop at the FTC.
Facebook is almost certainly telling the truth when it says it made an inadvertent mistake when it placed cookies on our machines that can track where we go on the Web by our unique identifier.
Facebook is also probably telling the truth when it says that has not stored or used this information.
The fact remains, what can be done, will be done. The current privacy paradigm is simply not sustainable.
Politicians pass laws, but that doesn’t mean they understand them.
Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum is justifiably upset by a Google bomb that links searches for his name to something too disgusting to repeat here. In demanding that Google take it down, however, Santorum does not seem to understand that all the responsibility—and liability—rests with the webmaster, not the search engine—in a law that passed when he was a member of the Senate. (Anybody out there know how Senator Santorum voted on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act?)
Santorum, however, does strike at a point.
“I suspect if something was up there like that about Joe Biden, they’d get rid of it,” he said. In fact, something was ‘up there’ about First Lady Michelle Obama, a truly offensive image. Google did act against one site carrying that image, citing malware concerns, and placed an ad explaining its stance. Technology companies will need to remain utterly consistent in how they apply these rules—and clear to the public how they operate. Politicians need to understand the need to play by the rules they themselves have passed.
To learn more about the impact of Section 230 on Google bombs, check out my book, Digital Assassination.
USA Today rates Washington, DC the “Most Socially Networked City” in the country. The survey ranked the 100 best – and worst – “Twitter Towns,” and the nation’s capital came out on top.
Following DC were:
2. Atlanta
3. Denver
4. Minneapolis
5. Seattle
While some may have thought Seattle – often considered the Internet technology capital – would have earned the top slot, experts conclude that politics played an important role in the ranking. No, Washington didn’t lobby for the title; but, Twitter is being used increasingly as a political tool, for advocacy and in GOTV efforts during election cycles.
Part of the research also included analysis of sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. Researchers collected the number of people making use of these social media tools per capita in each state’s most populated cities.
When the Federal Communications Commission issued its new “network neutrality” regulations last month, most of us were thinking about how this new layer of government was going to affect Internet freedom here in the United States. Most telecomm policy experts were not, however, talking about how other countries around the world might follow in our footsteps.
Bartlett Cleland, Director of the Texas-based Institute for Policy Innovation wrote this week about how countries like Venezuela are reassured by the FCC’s recent regulations, which they can now use to justify greater controls over their own communications systems.
Just days before the FCC made its ruling, the Venezuelan Parliament changed its laws in order to give President Hugo Chavez the power to regulate Internet content by implementing heavy regulations on Venezuelan-based service providers. Specifically the country’s ISPs are now required to block broad categories of material that, for instance, “fosters unrest among the citizenship or disturb[s] public order,” and “refuses to recognize the government’s authority.”
In other words, the Venezuelan government has found a way of regulating all content. As Cleland concludes, “Venezuela needed little provocation for its continued oppression, especially from the U.S.” Nevertheless, Chavez can relax “knowing that the U.S. has joined Venezuela in the company of governments who regulate the Internet.”
Remember when ‘friend’ was strictly a noun? The fact that it is now also a verb provides just a small sense of the impact that Mark Zuckerberg has had on society, and why he was designated Time‘s Person of the Year.
Just a few years ago, sociologists were warning that the Internet was diminishing social interaction (and social capital). Now, 500 million friends later, Facebook (and myriad other social networking sites) has turned that around. In the process, it has changed the way we communicate. When is the last time you spent an evening watching television without catching a few commercials that mention the companies’ Facebook page? If you’re in the communications business, how often are the communications products you produce used on a Facebook page? Read
Mark Zuckerberg is consumed with being accepted. And accepted he was: the prestigious Philips Exeter Academy, Harvard University. But despite his academic achievements, he was socially awkward – even Aspberger-like – and at times cruel. His was a personality unfit for social success.
At least that’s how writer Aaron Sorkin and director David Fincher portray the creator of Facebook in the new movie The Social Network. The movie is framed by two parallel lawsuits filed against Mark Zuckerberg, played by Jesse Eisenberg. And flashbacks to life at Harvard and in Silicon Valley offer both moving and cynical views of how a young college sophomore changed so rapidly and consequentially the way the world communicates. Read
Traditional Get Out the Vote (GOTV) efforts usually include activities like running telephone banks, transporting voters to-and-from polling stations, and canvassing street corners. In the age of digital communications, however, all this has changed. Certainly candidates and political interest groups are using social networking sites like Facebook to help drive turnout. But now they’re using these sites in a different way.
According to a report in Politico, the best way to communicate your message is to connect it to t(w)eener heartthrob Justin Bieber. “Just last week,” Politico reports, “rumors spread that Bieber’s fan base was so active on Twitter that the microblogging website has servers dedicated just to him.” Read
Communication today is about immediacy. That’s why the telephone and the TV are going out of style.
According to a study completed by the Pew Research Center in August, only 42 percent of Americans consider a TV set to be a necessity – down ten points from last year. Similarly the landline telephone is moving toward extinction. Only 62 percent of Americans view it as an essential appliance. And, not surprisingly, 46 percent of respondents in the 18-29-year old range see a landline as a daily necessity of life.
It’s not that Americans are tuning out or going off the grid. Far from it. Read