politics

7 tools of propaganda

history, language & literature, on writing, politics / /

From Roger Ebert’s “The O’Reilly Procedure” (Roger Ebert’s Journal: 14 June 2009):

The seven propaganda devices include:

  • Name calling — giving something a bad label to make the audience reject it without examining the evidence;
  • Glittering generalities — the opposite of name calling;
  • Card stacking — the selective use of facts and half-truths;
  • Bandwagon — appeals to the desire, common to most of us, to follow the crowd;
  • Plain folks — an attempt to convince an audience that they, and their ideas, are “of the people”;
  • Transfer — carries over the authority, sanction and prestige of something we respect or dispute to something the speaker would want us to accept; and
  • Testimonials — involving a respected (or disrespected) person endorsing or rejecting an idea or person.

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Could Green Dam lead to the largest botnet in history?

business, law, politics, security / /

Green_Damn_site_blocked.jpg

From Rob Cottingham’s “From blocking to botnet: Censorship isn’t the only problem with China’s new Internet blocking software” (Social Signal: 10 June 2009):

Any blocking software needs to update itself from time to time: at the very least to freshen its database of forbidden content, and more than likely to fix bugs, add features and improve performance. (Most anti-virus software does this.)

If all the software does is to refresh the list of banned sites, that limits the potential for abuse. But if the software is loading new executable code onto the computer, suddenly there’s the potential for something a lot bigger.

Say you’re a high-ranking official in the Chinese military. And let’s say you have some responsibility for the state’s capacity to wage so-called cyber warfare: digital assaults on an enemy’s technological infrastructure.

…

It strikes you: there’s a single backdoor into more that 40 million Chinese computers, capable of installing… well, nearly anything you want.

What if you used that backdoor, not just to update blocking software, but to create something else?

Say, the biggest botnet in history?

…

Still, a botnet 40 million strong (plus the installed base already in place in Chinese schools and other institutions) at the beck and call of the military is potentially a formidable weapon. Even if the Chinese government has no intention today of using Green Dam for anything other than blocking pornography, the temptation to repurpose it for military purposes may prove to be overwhelming.

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Taxi driver party lines

business, language & literature, politics, security, tech in changing society / /

8th Ave .....Midtown Manhattan
Creative Commons License photo credit: 708718

From Annie Karni’s “Gabbing Taxi Drivers Talking on ‘Party Lines’” (The New York Sun: 11 January 2007):

It’s not just wives at home or relatives overseas that keep taxi drivers tied up on their cellular phones during work shifts. Many cabbies say that when they are chatting on duty, it’s often with their cab driver colleagues on group party lines. Taxi drivers say they use conference calls to discuss directions and find out about congested routes to avoid. They come to depend on one another as first responders, reacting faster even than police to calls from drivers in distress. Some drivers say they participate in group prayers on a party line.

…

It is during this morning routine, waiting for the first shuttle flights to arrive from Washington and Boston, where many friendships between cabbies are forged and cell phone numbers are exchanged, Mr. Sverdlov said. Once drivers have each other’s numbers, they can use push-to-talk technology to call large groups all at once.

Mr. Sverdlov said he conferences with up to 10 cabbies at a time to discuss “traffic, what’s going on, this and that, and where do cops stay.” He estimated that every month, he logs about 20,000 talking minutes on his cell phone.

While civilian drivers are allowed to use hands-free devices to talk on cell phones while behind the wheel, the Taxi & Limousine Commission imposed a total cell phone ban for taxi drivers on duty in 1999. In 2006, the Taxi & Limousine Commission issued 1,049 summonses for phone use while on duty, up by almost 69% from the 621 summonses it issued the previous year. Drivers caught chatting while driving are fined $200 and receive two-point penalties on their licenses.

…

Drivers originally from countries like Israel, China, and America, who are few and far between, say they rarely chat on the phone with other cab drivers because of the language barrier. For many South Asians and Russian drivers, however, conference calls that are prohibited by the Taxi & Limousine Commission are mainstays of cabby life.

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Avoid toxic people

business, politics / /

From Milton Glaser’s “Ten Things I Have Learned” (Milton Glaser: 22 November 2001):

… the important thing that I can tell you is that there is a test to determine whether someone is toxic or nourishing in your relationship with them. Here is the test: You have spent some time with this person, either you have a drink or go for dinner or you go to a ball game. It doesn’t matter very much but at the end of that time you observe whether you are more energised or less energised. Whether you are tired or whether you are exhilarated. If you are more tired then you have been poisoned. If you have more energy you have been nourished. The test is almost infallible and I suggest that you use it for the rest of your life.

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Al Qaeda’s use of social networking sites

business, politics, security, social software, tech in changing society / /

From Brian Prince’s “How Terrorism Touches the ‘Cloud’ at RSA” (eWeek: 23 April 2009):

When it comes to the war on terrorism, not all battles, intelligence gathering and recruitment happen in the street. Some of it occurs in the more elusive world of the Internet, where supporters of terrorist networks build social networking sites to recruit and spread their message.  
Enter Jeff Bardin of Treadstone 71, a former code breaker, Arabic translator and U.S. military officer who has been keeping track of vBulletin-powered sites run by supporters of al Qaeda. There are between 15 and 20 main sites, he said, which are used by terrorist groups for everything from recruitment to the distribution of violent videos of beheadings.

… “One social networking site has over 200,000 participants. …

The videos on the sites are produced online by a company called “As-Sahab Media” (As-Sahab means “the cloud” in English). Once shot, the videos make their way from hideouts to the rest of the world via a system of couriers. Some of them contain images of violence; others exhortations from terrorist leaders. Also on the sites are tools such as versions of “Mujahideen Secrets,” which is used for encryption.

“It’s a pretty solid tool; it’s not so much that the tool is so much different from the new PGP-type [tool], but the fact is they built it from scratch, which shows a very mature software development lifecycle,” he said.

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What’s wrong with the Republicans

politics / /


Creative Commons License photo credit: bobster855

From Andrew Sullivan’s “Who Will “Sister Souljah” Them?” (The Daily Dish: 5 May 2009):

… the GOP is poison to me and many others. Why?

Their abandonment of limited government, their absurd spending under Bush, their contempt for civil liberties, their rigid mindset, their hostility to others, their worship of the executive branch, their contempt for judicial checks, their cluelessness with racial minorities and immigrants, their endorsement of torture as an American value, their homophobia, their know-nothing Christianism, and the sheer vileness of their leaders – from the dumb-as-a-post Steele to the brittle, money-grubbing cynic, Coulter and hollow, partisan neo-fascist Hannity.

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Newspapers are doomed

business, politics, social software, tech in changing society / /

From Jeff Sigmund’s “Newspaper Web Site Audience Increases More Than Ten Percent In First Quarter To 73.3 Million Visitors” (Newspaper Association of America: 23 April 2009):

Newspaper Web sites attracted more than 73.3 million monthly unique visitors on average (43.6 percent of all Internet users) in the first quarter of 2009, a record number that reflects a 10.5 percent increase over the same period a year ago, according to a custom analysis provided by Nielsen Online for the Newspaper Association of America.

In addition, newspaper Web site visitors generated an average of more than 3.5 billion page views per month throughout the quarter, an increase of 12.8 percent over the same period a year ago (3.1 billion page views).

Contrast that with the article on Craigslist in Wikipedia (1 May 2009):

The site serves over twenty billion page views per month, putting it in 28th place overall among web sites world wide, ninth place overall among web sites in the United States (per Alexa.com on March 27, 2009), to over fifty million unique monthly visitors in the United States alone (per Compete.com on April 7, 2009). As of March 17, 2009 it was ranked 7th on Alexa. With over forty million new classified advertisements each month, Craigslist is the leading classifieds service in any medium. The site receives over one million new job listings each month, making it one of the top job boards in the world.

Even at its best, the entire newspaper industry only gets 1/5 of what Craigslist sees each month.

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Open source & patents

business, law, politics, tech in changing society / /

From Liz Laffan’s “GPLv2 vs GPLv3: The two seminal open source licenses, their roots, consequences and repercussions” (VisionMobile: September 2007):

Cumulatively patents have been doubling practically every year since 1990. Patents are now probably the most contentious issue in software-related intellectual property rights.

…

However we should also be aware that software written from scratch is as likely to infringe patents as FOSS covered software – due mainly to the increasing proliferation of patents in all software technologies. Consequently the risk of patent infringement is largely comparable whether one chooses to write one’s own software or use software covered by the GPLv2; one will most likely have to self-indemnify against a potential patent infringement claim in both cases.

…

The F.U.D. (fear, uncertainty and doubt) that surrounds patents in FOSS has been further heightened by two announcements, both instigated by Microsoft. Firstly in November 2006 Microsoft and Novell1 entered into a cross- licensing patent agreement where Microsoft gave Novell assurances that it would not sue the company or its customers if they were to be found infringing Microsoft patents in the Novell Linux distribution. Secondly in May 2007 Microsoft2 restated (having alluded to the same in 2004) that FOSS violates 235 Microsoft patents. Unfortunately, the Redmond giant did not state which patents in particular were being infringed and nor have they initiated any actions against a user or distributor of Linux.

…

The FOSS community have reacted to these actions by co-opting the patent system and setting up the Patent Commons (http://www.patentcommons.org). This initiative, managed by the Linux Foundation, coordinates and manages a patent commons reference library, documenting information about patent- related pledges in support of Linux and FOSS that are provided by large software companies. Moreover, software giants such as IBM and Nokia have committed not to assert patents against the Linux kernel and other FOSS projects. In addition, the FSF have strengthened the patent clause of GPLv3…

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David Foster Wallace on leadership

history, language & literature, politics / /

From David Foster Wallace’s “The Weasel, Twelve Monkeys And The Shrub: Seven Days In The Life Of The Late, Great John McCain” (Rolling Stone: 13 April 2000):

The weird thing is that the word “leader” itself is cliché and boring, but when you come across somebody who actually is a real leader, that person isn’t cliché or boring at all; in fact he’s sort of the opposite of cliché and boring.

Obviously, a real leader isn’t just somebody who has ideas you agree with, nor is it just somebody you happen to think is a good guy. A real leader is somebody who, because of his own particular power and charisma and example, is able to inspire people, with “inspire” being used here in a serious and non-cliché way. A real leader can somehow get us to do certain things that deep down we think are good and want to be able to do but usually can’t get ourselves to do on our own. It’s a mysterious quality, hard to define, but we always know it when we see it, even as kids. You can probably remember seeing it in certain really great coaches, or teachers, or some extremely cool older kid you “looked up to” (interesting phrase) and wanted to be just like. Some of us remember seeing the quality as kids in a minister or rabbi, or a Scoutmaster, or a parent, or a friend’s parent, or a supervisor in a summer job. And yes, all these are “authority figures,” but it’s a special kind of authority. If you’ve ever spent time in the military, you know how incredibly easy it is to tell which of your superiors are real leaders and which aren’t, and how little rank has to do with it. A leader’s real “authority” is a power you voluntarily give him, and you grant him this authority not with resentment or resignation but happily; it feels right. Deep down, you almost always like how a real leader makes you feel, the way you find yourself working harder and pushing yourself and thinking in ways you couldn’t ever get to on your own.

Lincoln was, by all available evidence, a real leader, and Churchill, and Gandhi, and King. Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, and de Gaulle, and certainly Marshall and maybe Eisenhower. (Of course Hitler was a real leader too, a very powerful one, so you have to watch out; all it is is a weird kind of power.)

…

Now you have to pay close attention to something that’s going to seem real obvious. There is a difference between a great leader and a great salesman. Because a salesman’s ultimate, overriding motivation is his own self-interest. If you buy what he’s selling, the salesman profits. So even though the salesman may have a very powerful, charismatic, admirable personality, and might even persuade you that buying really is in your interest (and it really might be) — still, a little part of you always knows that what the salesman’s ultimately after is something for himself. And this awareness is painful … although admittedly it’s a tiny pain, more like a twinge, and often unconscious. But if you’re subjected to enough great salesmen and salespitches and marketing concepts for long enough — like from your earliest Saturday-morning cartoons, let’s say — it is only a matter of time before you start believing deep down that everything is sales and marketing, and that whenever somebody seems like they care about you or about some noble idea or cause, that person is a salesman and really ultimately doesn’t give a shit about you or some cause but really just wants something for himself.

…

Yes, this is simplistic. All politicians sell, always have. FDR and JFK and MLK and Gandhi were great salesmen. But that’s not all they were. People could smell it. That weird little extra something. It had to do with “character” (which, yes, is also a cliché — suck it up).

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Why did Thomas Jefferson bring a stuffed moose to France?

history, politics, science / /

From David G. Post’s “Jefferson’s Moose” (Remarks presented at the Stanford Law School Conference on Privacy in Cyberspace: 7 February 2000):

In 1787, Jefferson, then the American Minister to France, had the “complete skeleton, skin & horns of the Moose” shipped to him in Paris and mounted in the lobby of his hotel. One can only imagine the comments made by bemused onlookers and hotel staff.

This was no small undertaking at that time — I suppose it would be no small undertaking even today. It’s not as if he had no other things to do with his time or his money. It’s worth asking: Why did he do it? What could have possessed him?

He wanted, first, to shock. He wanted his French friends to stand back, to gasp, and to say: There really is a new world out there, one that has things in it that we can hardly imagine. He wanted them to have what Lessig called an “aha! moment” in regard to the New World from out of which Jefferson (and his moose) had emerged.

But there was another, more specific, purpose. He wanted to show them that this new world was not a degenerate place. The Comte de Buffon, probably the most celebrated naturalist of the late 18th Century, had propounded just such a theory about the degeneracy of life in the New World. Jefferson described Buffon’s theory this way:

“That the animals common both to the old and new world, are smaller in the latter; that those peculiar to the new, are on a smaller scale; that those which have been domesticated in both, have degenerated in America; and that on the whole the New World exhibits fewer species.”

Though it may be hard to appreciate from our more enlightened 21st century perspective, this was deadly serious stuff — both as science and, more to our point here, as politics; to Jefferson, Buffon’s theory had ominous political implications, for it was, as he put it, “within one step” of the notion that man, too, would degenerate in the New World. Thus, it could and did give a kind of intellectual cover to the notion that man in the New World could not be trusted to govern himself.

Sometimes a picture — or, better yet, a carcass — is worth a thousand words. So out comes the moose; larger than its European counterparts (the reindeer and caribou), its brooding presence in downtown Paris would surely make observers think twice about Buffon’s theory. Jefferson was no fool; he knew full well that one data point does not settle the argument, and he would provide, in his “Notes on the State of Virginia,” a detailed refutation of Buffon’s charge, page after page of careful analysis of the relative sizes of American and European animals.

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Totalitarian regimes adopt the trappings of religion for themselves

history, politics, religion / /

From Steven Weinberg’s “Without God” (The New York Review of Books: 25 September 2008):

It has often been noted that the greatest horrors of the twentieth century were perpetrated by regimes – Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China – that while rejecting some or all of the teachings of religion, copied characteristics of religion at its worst: infallible leaders, sacred writings, mass rituals, the execution of apostates, and a sense of community that justified exterminating those outside the community.

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How right-wing talk radio works

business, history, politics / /

From Dan Shelly’s “Former News Radio Staffer Spills the Beans on How Shock Jocks Inspire Hatred and Anger” (AlterNet: 17 November 2008):

To begin with, talk show hosts such as Charlie Sykes – one of the best in the business – are popular and powerful because they appeal to a segment of the population that feels disenfranchised and even victimized by the media. These people believe the media are predominantly staffed by and consistently reflect the views of social liberals. This view is by now so long-held and deep-rooted, it has evolved into part of virtually every conservative’s DNA.

To succeed, a talk show host must perpetuate the notion that his or her listeners are victims, and the host is the vehicle by which they can become empowered. The host frames virtually every issue in us-versus-them terms. There has to be a bad guy against whom the host will emphatically defend those loyal listeners.

This enemy can be a politician – either a Democratic officeholder or, in rare cases where no Democrat is convenient to blame, it can be a “RINO” (a “Republican In Name Only,” who is deemed not conservative enough). It can be the cold, cruel government bureaucracy. More often than not, however, the enemy is the “mainstream media” – local or national, print or broadcast.

…

This is a common talk show tactic: If you lack compelling arguments in favor of your candidate or point of view, attack the other side. These attacks often rely on two key rhetorical devices, which I call You Know What Would Happen If and The Preemptive Strike.

Using the first strategy, a host will describe something a liberal has said or done that conservatives disagree with, but for which the liberal has not been widely criticized, and then say, “You know what would happen if a conservative had said (or done) that? He (or she) would have been filleted by the ‘liberal media.’ ” This is particularly effective because it’s a two-fer, simultaneously reinforcing the notion that conservatives are victims and that “liberals” are the enemy.

The second strategy, The Preemptive Strike, is used when a host knows that news reflecting poorly on conservative dogma is about to break or become more widespread. When news of the alleged massacre at Haditha first trickled out in the summer of 2006, not even Iraq War chest-thumper Charlie Sykes would defend the U.S. Marines accused of killing innocent civilians in the Iraqi village. So he spent lots of air time criticizing how the “mainstream media” was sure to sensationalize the story in the coming weeks. Charlie would kill the messengers before any message had even been delivered.

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A homogenized religion for America in the 21st century

history, politics, religion / /

From Damon Linker’s “The Future of Christian America” (The New Republic: 7 April 2009):

hat will provide the theological content of the nation’s civil religion now that the “mere orthodoxy” of the evangelical-Catholic alliance has proven unsuitable for a pluralistic nation of 300 million people? To my mind, the most likely and salutary option is moralistic therapeutic deism. Here is the core of its (Rousseauian) catechism, in the words of sociologist Christian Smith:

1. “A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.”

2. “God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.”

3. “The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.”

4. “God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.”

5. “Good people go to heaven when they die.”

Theologically speaking, this watered-down, anemic, insipid form of Judeo-Christianity is pretty repulsive. But politically speaking, it’s perfect: thoroughly anodyne, inoffensive, tolerant. And that makes it perfectly suited to serve as the civil religion of the highly differentiated twenty-first century United States.

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Now that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has switched to the Web …

business, politics, social software, tech in changing society / /

From William Yardley and Richard Pérez-Peña’s “Seattle Paper Shifts Entirely to the Web” (The New York Times: 16 March 2009):

The P-I, as it is called, will resemble a local Huffington Post more than a traditional newspaper, with a news staff of about 20 people rather than the 165 it had, and a site with mostly commentary, advice and links to other news sites, along with some original reporting.

…

The new P-I site has recruited some current and former government officials, including a former mayor, a former police chief and the current head of Seattle schools, to write columns, and it will repackage some material from Hearst’s large stable of magazines. It will keep some of the paper’s popular columnists and bloggers and the large number of unpaid local bloggers whose work appears on the site.

…

Because the newspaper has had no business staff of its own, the new operation plans to hire more than 20 people in areas like ad sales.

Now that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has switched to the Web … Read More »

Social software: 5 properties & 3 dynamics

business, history, politics, security, social software, tech in changing society / /

From danah boyd’s “Social Media is Here to Stay… Now What?” at the Microsoft Research Tech Fest, Redmond, Washington (danah: 26 February 2009):

Certain properties are core to social media in a combination that alters how people engage with one another. I want to discuss five properties of social media and three dynamics. These are the crux of what makes the phenomena we’re seeing so different from unmediated phenomena.

A great deal of sociality is about engaging with publics, but we take for granted certain structural aspects of those publics. Certain properties are core to social media in a combination that alters how people engage with one another. I want to discuss five properties of social media and three dynamics. These are the crux of what makes the phenomena we’re seeing so different from unmediated phenomena.

1. Persistence. What you say sticks around. This is great for asynchronicity, not so great when everything you’ve ever said has gone down on your permanent record. …

2. Replicability. You can copy and paste a conversation from one medium to another, adding to the persistent nature of it. This is great for being able to share information, but it is also at the crux of rumor-spreading. Worse: while you can replicate a conversation, it’s much easier to alter what’s been said than to confirm that it’s an accurate portrayal of the original conversation.

3. Searchability. My mother would’ve loved to scream search into the air and figure out where I’d run off with friends. She couldn’t; I’m quite thankful. But with social media, it’s quite easy to track someone down or to find someone as a result of searching for content. Search changes the landscape, making information available at our fingertips. This is great in some circumstances, but when trying to avoid those who hold power over you, it may be less than ideal.

4. Scalability. Social media scales things in new ways. Conversations that were intended for just a friend or two might spiral out of control and scale to the entire school or, if it is especially embarrassing, the whole world. …

5. (de)locatability. With the mobile, you are dislocated from any particular point in space, but at the same time, location-based technologies make location much more relevant. This paradox means that we are simultaneously more and less connected to physical space.

Those five properties are intertwined, but their implications have to do with the ways in which they alter social dynamics. Let’s look at three different dynamics that have been reconfigured as a result of social media.

1. Invisible Audiences. We are used to being able to assess the people around us when we’re speaking. We adjust what we’re saying to account for the audience. Social media introduces all sorts of invisible audiences. There are lurkers who are present at the moment but whom we cannot see, but there are also visitors who access our content at a later date or in a different environment than where we first produced them. As a result, we are having to present ourselves and communicate without fully understanding the potential or actual audience. The potential invisible audiences can be stifling. Of course, there’s plenty of room to put your head in the sand and pretend like those people don’t really exist.

2. Collapsed Contexts. Connected to this is the collapsing of contexts. In choosing what to say when, we account for both the audience and the context more generally. Some behaviors are appropriate in one context but not another, in front of one audience but not others. Social media brings all of these contexts crashing into one another and it’s often difficult to figure out what’s appropriate, let alone what can be understood.

3. Blurring of Public and Private. Finally, there’s the blurring of public and private. These distinctions are normally structured around audience and context with certain places or conversations being “public” or “private.” These distinctions are much harder to manage when you have to contend with the shifts in how the environment is organized.

All of this means that we’re forced to contend with a society in which things are being truly reconfigured. So what does this mean? As we are already starting to see, this creates all new questions about context and privacy, about our relationship to space and to the people around us.

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Kids & adults use social networking sites differently

business, politics, social software, tech in changing society / /

From danah boyd’s “Social Media is Here to Stay… Now What?” at the Microsoft Research Tech Fest, Redmond, Washington (danah: 26 February 2009):

For American teenagers, social network sites became a social hangout space, not unlike the malls in which I grew up or the dance halls of yesteryears. This was a place to gather with friends from school and church when in-person encounters were not viable. Unlike many adults, teenagers were never really networking. They were socializing in pre-exiting groups.

Social network sites became critically important to them because this was where they sat and gossiped, jockeyed for status, and functioned as digital flaneurs. They used these tools to see and be seen. …

Teen conversations may appear completely irrational, or pointless at best. “Yo, wazzup?” “Not much, how you?” may not seem like much to an outsider, but this is a form of social grooming. It’s a way of checking in, confirming friendships, and negotiating social waters.

Adults have approached Facebook in very different ways. Adults are not hanging out on Facebook. They are more likely to respond to status messages than start a conversation on someone’s wall (unless it’s their birthday of course). Adults aren’t really decorating their profiles or making sure that their About Me’s are up-to-date. Adults, far more than teens, are using Facebook for its intended purpose as a social utility. For example, it is a tool for communicating with the past.

Adults may giggle about having run-ins with mates from high school, but underneath it all, many of them are curious. This isn’t that different than the school reunion. … Teenagers craft quizzes for themselves and their friends. Adults are crafting them to show-off to people from the past and connect the dots between different audiences as a way of coping with the awkwardness of collapsed contexts.

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The importance of network effects to social software

business, history, politics, social software, tech in changing society / /

From danah boyd’s “Social Media is Here to Stay… Now What?” at the Microsoft Research Tech Fest, Redmond, Washington (danah: 26 February 2009):

Many who build technology think that a technology’s feature set is the key to its adoption and popularity. With social media, this is often not the case. There are triggers that drive early adopters to a site, but the single most important factor in determining whether or not a person will adopt one of these sites is whether or not it is the place where their friends hangout. In each of these cases, network effects played a significant role in the spread and adoption of the site.

The uptake of social media is quite different than the uptake of non-social technologies. For the most part, you don’t need your friends to use Word to find the tool useful. You do need your friends to use email for it to be useful, but, thanks to properties of that medium, you don’t need them to be using Outlook or Hotmail to write to them. Many of the new genres of social media are walled gardens, requiring your friends to use that exact site to be valuable. This has its advantages for the companies who build it – that’s the whole attitude behind lock-in. But it also has its costs. Consider for example the fact that working class and upper class kids can’t talk to one another if they are on different SNSs.

Friendster didn’t understand network effects. In kicking off users who weren’t conforming to their standards, they pissed off more than those users; they pissed off those users’ friends who were left with little purpose to use the site. The popularity of Friendster unraveled as fast as it picked up, but the company never realized what hit them. All of their metrics were based on number of users. While only a few users deleted their accounts, the impact of those lost accounts was huge. The friends of those who departed slowly stopped using the site. At first, they went from logging in every hour to logging in every day, never affecting the metrics. But as nothing new came in and as the collective interest waned, their attention went elsewhere. Today, Friendster is succeeding because of its popularity in other countries, but in the US, it’s a graveyard of hipsters stuck in 2003.

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MySpace/Facebook history & sociology

business, history, politics, social software, tech in changing society / /

From danah boyd’s “Social Media is Here to Stay… Now What?” at the Microsoft Research Tech Fest, Redmond, Washington (danah: 26 February 2009):

Facebook had launched as a Harvard-only site before expanding to other elite institutions before expanding to other 4-year-colleges before expanding to 2-year colleges. It captured the mindshare of college students everywhere. It wasn’t until 2005 that they opened the doors to some companies and high schools. And only in 2006, did they open to all.

…

Facebook was narrated as the “safe” alternative and, in the 2006-2007 school year, a split amongst American teens occurred. Those college-bound kids from wealthier or upwardly mobile backgrounds flocked to Facebook while teens from urban or less economically privileged backgrounds rejected the transition and opted to stay with MySpace while simultaneously rejecting the fears brought on by American media. Many kids were caught in the middle and opted to use both, but the division that occurred resembles the same “jocks and burnouts” narrative that shaped American schools in the 1980s.

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New Zealand’s new copyright law

business, law, politics, tech in changing society, technology / /

From Mark Gibbs’ “New Zealand gets insane copyright law” (Network World: 20 February 2009):

A law was recently passed in New Zealand that has created what many consider to be the world’s harshest copyright enforcement law. This insanity, found in Sections 92A and C of New Zealand’s Copyright Amendment Act 2008 establishes – and I am not making this up – a guilt upon accusation principle!

Yep, you read that right. This means that anyone accused of “copyright infringement” will get his Internet connection cut off; and treated as guilty until proven innocent.

And if that weren’t enough, this crazy legislation defines anyone providing Internet access as an ISP and makes them responsible for monitoring and cutting off Internet access for anyone who uses their services and is accused of copyright violations. Thus libraries, schools, coffee shops, cafes – anyone offering any kind of Internet access – will be considered ISPs and become responsible and potentially liable.

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