Social Networks - The Dark Side [IS52026B Social computing - week 4]

8/3/2019 Social Networks - The Dark Side [IS52026B Social computing - week 4]

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IS52026 Social ComputingWeek 3: social networks the dark side

dan mcquillan


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if the product is free, you are the product

http://fuchs.uti.at/699/What is Facebooks New Privacy Policy All About?Facebook still makes use of all user data, user

communication data, user browsing behaviour, andeven data collected from other websites in order tosell these data as commodity to advertising clients

that serve targeted ads to users. Facebook therebymakes profit, the users create value, are not paidfor this work and their data becomes a commodity.


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by YankeeInCanada(CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

LOCK-INone problem is that platforms lock in your social graph

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_graphThe social graph is a term coined by scientists working in the social

areas of graph theory. It has been described as "the globalmapping of everybody and how they're related"

Concern has focused on the fact that Facebook's social graph is

owned by the company and is not shared with other services,

giving it a major advantage over other services and disallowingits users to take their graph with them to other services if theywish to do so, such as when a user is dissatisfied with Facebook

http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/why-facebook-is-building-a-second-internet-1028812?src=rss&attr=all

How do you get your stuff back out again if you decide you don'twant to keep it on Facebook? Where will you take your stuff ifFacebook's cornered the market for photo sharing, video sharing

and whatever-else sharing, driving rivals out of business? Whatare you going to do about your Timeline if you get divorced?What happens if Facebook cocks up and deletes your account?


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fbFaces

PRIVACY

show -http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-08/18/fb-

faces/viewgallery#!image-number=1

http://www.creativeapplications.net/processing/fbfaces-processing-scripts/


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show -video: 1:31 to 5:09http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZKW0ArCmmk


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show -http://www.face-to-facebook.net/

http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/facebook-teaches-users-how-to-opt-out-of-photo-recognition/

The recent deployment of Tag Suggestions onFacebook has been a hot topic of discussion foractivists seeking more privacy controls. The

Facebook feature is currently turned on for all usersand uses facial recognition patterns to help userstag friends in photos. The software compares newlyuploaded photos to previously tagged photos tosearch for a facial match. Users can easily opt outof allowing their face to by tagged in friend photos,but only a small portion of users are likely aware of

the automatic tagging function.


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http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2011/08/germanys-war-facebook/40771/

Germany's War on FacebookFacebook's facial recognition feature that helps users tag photos.

After joining in the chorus of European nations that objected tothe feature launch in June, German authorities are now the firstto declare the feature illegal.

Last July, Caspar launched a similar case against Facebook forsaving data of people who hadn't even signed up for the social

network. Like they're now doing more aggressively with theirfacial recognition feature, Facebook collected data about non-Facebook users through the Friend Finder feature and thenstored it without permission.

Germany has among some of the strictest data protection andprivacy laws in the European Union, largely created in the wakeof informational abuses perpetrated by the Nazis and the Stasi,the East German secret police. One of the foundational conceptsof German data protection law is that no data can be collected

without the express consent of the user.


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STALKINGthe new model for internet advertising, called

behavioral targeting

quote from -http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014240527487039

40904575395073512989404.htmlThe Web's New Gold Mine: Your Secrets


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by Space & Light(CC BY-SA 2.0)


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by toodlepip (CC BY-NC 2.0)

TRACKING

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20006532-38.htmlEven if someone is not a Facebook user or is not logged in,

Facebook's social plug-ins collect the address of the Webpage being visited and the Internet address of the visitoras soon as the page is loaded--clicking on the Like buttonis not required. If enough sites participate, that permitsFacebook to assemble a vast amount of data about

Internet users' browsing habits.How it works: Facebook wants publishers to insert an

iframe or JavaScript in the HTML for their Web pages. Assoon as the page is loaded, the code invokes a PHPscript at Facebook.com that records information includingthe URL for the Web page, your IP address, and yourFacebook ID (if you're authenticated). If a publisher usesFacebook's Javascript API, the simpler option, here'swhat the embedded Like button for CNET.com would looklike:


11/29

a recent Facebook patent application details specific methods fortracking its users while they're using other websites. Michael

Arrington pointed out over the weekend that this follows explicitstatements from Facebook employees that the social networkinggiant has "no interest in tracking people."

http://uncrunched.com/2011/10/01/brutal-dishonesty/Facebook does not track users across the web, A Facebook

spokesperson on September 25, 2011and

Generally, unlike other major Internet companies, we have nointerest in tracking people. Facebook employee on September25, 2011

v.A method is described for tracking information about the activities

of users of a social networking system while on another domain. Facebook Patent application dated September 22, 2011


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by caseorganic (CC BY-NC 2.0)

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/10/03/1825234/Facebook-Files-For-a-Patent-To-Track-Its-Users-On-Other-Sites"In one embodiment, a

method is described for tracking information about the activities ofusers of a social networking system while on another domain. Themethod includes maintaining a profile for each of one or more usersof the social networking system, each profile identifying a connectionto one or more other users of the social networking system andincluding information about the user. The method additionallyincludes receiving one or more communications from a third-party

website having a different domain than the social network system,each message communicating an action taken by a user of the

social networking system on the third-party website. The methodadditionally includes logging the actions taken on the third-party

website in the social networking system, each logged actionincluding information about the action."

CHECK-INS?New FB privacy policy: http://fuchs.uti.at/699/We may put together your current city with GPS and other location

information we have about you to, for example, tell you and your

friends about people or events nearby, or offer deals to you that youmight be interested in. We may also put together data about you toserve you ads that might be more relevant to you. When we get yourGPS location, we put it together with other location information wehave about you (like your current city). But we only keep it until it isno longer useful to provide you services.


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by anitakhart(CC BY-SA 2.0)

SUMMARY

Remember the adage: if you can't see what producta site is selling, the product is you. That's definitelythe case with Facebook, whose entire businessdepends on mining the details of your life to bettertarget ads for pointless crap you don't need.

quote from-http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/sep/27/fa

cebook-open-graph-web-underclassWhy Facebook's new Open Graph makes us all part

of the web underclass


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by birgerking (CC BY 2.0)

GOOGLE+http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2105755/Real-Names-

Google-Government-The-Identity-EcosystemJust two years ago in 2009, in the name of Internet freedom,

Google refused to go along with South Koreas Real ID/RealName policy. So why did Google make a 180-degree turn fromInternet freedom to Internet accountability? Why did Google in2009 refuse to honor South Koreas real name system and nowinsist on one for Google users?

We get more clues to the possible true nature of the G+ Project

when we read Carvins full transcript of the interview with EricSchmidt.And the notion of strong identity was never invented in the

Internet. Many people worked on it - I worked on it as a scientist20 years ago, and its a hard problem. So if we knew that it wasa real person, then we could sort of hold them accountable, wecould check them, we could give them things, we could youknow bill them, you know we could have credit cards and soforth and so on, there are all sorts of reasons.


19/29

hurriyetdailynews.com

REPRESSION

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/02/06/books/review/Siegel.html

Evgeny Morozov - Net Delusion,(belarus). china, vietnam,sudan:http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/04/06/111637/suda

ns-government-crushed-protests.html


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ANONYMITYhttp://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2011/08/04/real-names.html

Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. It thus exemplifies thepurpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment inparticular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliationand theirideas from suppressionat the hand of an intolerant society.

-1995 Supreme Court ruling, McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission

list from here:http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2011/08/04/real-names.html

http://jilliancyork.com/2011/07/29/a-case-for-pseudonyms/

There are myriad reasons why an individual may feel safer identifying undera name other than their birth name. Teenagers who identify as membersof the LGBT community, for example, are regularly harassed online andmay prefer to identify online using a pseudonym. Individuals whosespouses or partners work for the government or are well known often

wish to conceal aspects of their own lifestyle and may feel morecomfortable operating under a different name online. Survivors ofdomestic abuse who need not to be found by their abusers may wish toalter their name in whole or in part.

...While these arguments are not entirely without merit, they misframe theproblem. It is not incumbent upon strict real-name policy advocates toshow that policies insisting on the use of real names have an upside. It isincumbent upon them to demonstrate that these benefits outweigh somevery serious drawbacks.


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http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/09/03/0115241/Heises-Two-Clicks-For-More-Privacy-vs-Facebook

Heise's 'Two Clicks For More Privacy' vs. Facebookhttp://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/09/03/0115241/Heises

-Two-Clicks-For-More-Privacy-vs-FacebookFriday September 02"Yesterday, German technology news site Heise

changed their social 'like' buttons to a two-clickformat (Original in German). This will effectivelydisable unintentional automatic tracking of all page

visits by third-party social sites like Facebook,Twitter or Google+. Less than 24 hours later over500 websites have asked about the technology.Facebook is now threatening to blacklist Heise(Original in German)."


23/29

crysp.uwaterloo.ca/software/facecloak/

http://crysp.uwaterloo.ca/software/facecloak/. FaceCloak is a Firefox extension that replaces your

personal information with fake information beforesending it to a social networking site. Your actualpersonal information is encrypted and storedsecurely somewhere else. Only friends who wereexplicitly authorized by you have access to thisinformation, and FaceCloak transparently replaces

the fake information while your friends are viewingyour profile.


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David Goldman for The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/nyregion/12about.htmlHow angry is the world at Facebook for devouring every morsel of

personal information we are willing to feed it?A few months back, four geeky college students, living on pizza in

a computer lab downtown on Mercer Street, decided to build asocial network that wouldnt force people to surrender theirprivacy to a big business. It would take three or four months to

write the code, and they would need a few thousand dollarseach to live on.

They gave themselves 39 days to raise $10,000, using an online

site, Kickstarter, that helps creative people find support.It turned out that just about all they had to do was whisper theirplans.

We were shocked, said one of the four, Dan Grippi, 21. For somestrange reason, everyone just agreed with this whole privacything.

They announced their project on April 24. They reached their$10,000 goal in 12 days, and the money continues to come in:as of Tuesday afternoon, they had raised $23,676 from 739

backers.

https://joindiaspora.com/


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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_%28software%29

The group was inspired to create Diaspora by aFebruary 5, 2010 speech from Columbia Universitylaw professor Eben Moglen to the Internet Society'sNew York Chapter, "Freedom in the Cloud", inwhich Moglen described centralized socialnetworks as "spying for free."[5][6]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_%28software%29

Diaspora works by letting users set up their ownserver (or "pod") to host content; pods can theninteract to share status updates, photographs, andother social data.[8]

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9186498/Diaspora_A_first_peek_at_Facebook_s_challenger


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FOUCAULT

Panopticon

See also lectures 19 & 20.


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by duncan (CC BY-NC 2.0)


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In the lab today....

In the lab...ghosterybusiness modelanonymity

Social Networks - The Dark Side [IS52026B Social computing - week 4]

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