Month: February 2012

Posted on by Yonatan Moskowitz

Free Speech in Databases: Martians on Facebook

The European Data Protection Directive contains a list of seven principles governing recommendations on protecting personal data. One of them–‘access’–includes the right to view data being held about us and correct them if they are wrong. The purpose of this is to ensure that data about me are not used in contexts that I do not want them used in. It allows me to complete incomplete information and correct mischaracterizations of my character that I would consider damaging if they were viewed and/or used by someone. Say, for instance, that someone had a database with my gender written down incorrectly. I […]

Posted on by Alexander Furnas

Weekend Quick Hits

This is going to become a weekly thing. Just some quick notes about interesting things that have been floating around over the week and are worth a quick comment. On paying an unlimited fine, or the UK shills for the media industry: Ars was among a group of outlets commenting this week on the notice that the UK’s Serious Organized Crime Agency (SOCA) put up on a domain it had seized, RnBXclusive.com. Below is a screencap of the warning that SOCA put up for 32 hours. The egregious thing here isn’t actually the domain seizure (although that game of whack-a-mole […]

Posted on by Amanda Summers-Plotno

CNN, Some Consistency Please?

CNN recently suspended political contributor Roland Martin after he posted controversial tweets during the Super Bowl. If a dude at your Super Bowl party is hyped about David Beckham’s H&M underwear ad, smack the ish out of him! #superbowl — rolandsmartin (@rolandsmartin) February 6, 2012   The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) asked CNN to fire Martin for advocating “violence against gay people.” CNN issued the following statement to the Washington Post: “Roland Martin’s tweets were regrettable and offensive. Language that demeans is inconsistent with the values and culture of our organization, and is not tolerated. We have […]

Posted on by Neil Basu

Playing with New Toys

Last week, I found myself in Nuffield College, watching a bright-eyed lecturer, Ilmo van der Lowe, in fascination. Believe me when I say that I knew less about the topic, ‘co-rumination,’ than you did. But knowing Ilmo’s background in social psychology (a field in which I had received my bachelor’s degree), I had trekked over to glean what I could. Luckily for me, the lecture topic seemed almost extraneous. Ilmo laid the foundation for how the field of social psychology was waiting for its next theoretical breakthrough, and then broke out his real reason for speaking: to show that network […]

Posted on by Yonatan Moskowitz

Facebook’s IPO–Outsourcing the push to shrink privacy

Facebook has been accused of shrinking the public’s “right to be let alone.” Soon they will be able to call on shareholders to demand that the government leave Facebook alone. If you’re a privacy advocate, this is worrying. Facebook’s IPO will increase the number of voices shouting on their side when regulators eventually threaten their pursuit of profit. Goldman may have a large stake right now, but if Goldman, Morgan Stanley, and shareholders-like-you own a piece of the pie, the desire to increase the size of the pie is spread more broadly. Facebook is our case study, but their situation […]

Posted on by Alexander Furnas

Is Linkbait the new Classifieds?

The news has always been subsidized; it has never been a money maker. Print newspapers were mechanisms that bundled content and the lucrative parts – automotive, home and garden, classifieds – subsidized the difficult to monetize but incredibly socially valuable national and international news sections. According to a 2010 presentation by Hal Varian, classified ads once accounted for about 32% of total newspaper revenue. Craigslist, monster.com, and other online venues have removed this revenue source for newspapers – even in their online manifestations. Total classified ad revenue declined over 70% between 2000 and 2010 industry-wide, from a robust $19.6 billion […]

Posted on by Neil Basu

Slow Down, Apple: How to Look at Technology in Education

  On January 20th, Wired published an article reporting the results of a pilot study jointly conducted by Apple and Houghton Mifflin on the impact of iPads in a middle school classroom. The title (“iPad a Solid Education Tool, Study Reports”) reflected the optimistic and surely-not-conclusive need for digital supplements to enhance educational outcomes. To keep it brief, the study basically put iPads in the hands of middle schoolers and told them to read their algebra textbook using its interface. 78% of the students who were given iPads tested at proficient levels or higher in algebra, compared with 59% of […]

Posted on by Yonatan Moskowitz

Cyber Negligence: Sending My Grandma to Jail

Confession time: Both my grandmother and I routinely fail to keep our home computer and web-browser security up to date. Are we bad ‘netizens’ if we leave the keys in the ignition of our unlocked computer? Is it reasonable to complain about Anonymous without ensuring that my laziness (her inability) isn’t giving them easy ammunition for their cyber-dissent? Is our activity criminally negligent, and if so why can’t we be punished for it? Last year, authorities in Spain arrested three suspects for allegedly downloading and booting up a program (called a Low Orbit Ion Cannon or LOIC) that lets the […]

Posted on by Alexander Furnas

The Heartbreaking Irony of Open Peering

I just stumbled into a heartbreakingly ironic example of the Internet sucking. Larry Lessig, who is of course the man, updated his seminal Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (1999) in 2006 by, in part, putting it up on a collaborative wiki and allowing people to participate. This was great because, like licensing all of his work under Creative Commons licenses and making them all available as free pdf downloads, it was another example of him putting his money where his mouth is. As someone who purports to believe in the power and value of an open and participatory internet, […]

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