web strategy + consulting
“The job of a citizen is to keep his mouth open.”
- Gunter Grass
Gunter Grass’ message is especially critical to those early-to-late majority users (i.e., everybody) who may not know the value or importance of their voice in the battle for a many-to-many democratic internet.
This post seeks to address why this is with resources and activities designed specifically for early-late majority users to find and use their voice for digital democracy.
Select-all is one of my favourite user controls. It allows me to quickly move, archive or delete large volumes of data quickly and easily. It’s also a means of defining my ownership over my content. In an increasingly undemocratic web of surveillance, abuse of power and corporate control, I believe users deserve improved control over their data.
All these cool new applications and services have one thing in common: They make it easy to get signed up and contributing, but not so easy to leave. There are also many documented cases of security bugs that have resulted in the publication of private user data. What’s that? You still don’t care? Read on.
[POST continued below]
What are the most essential user controls for social media?
NOTE: When I created this little poll it was my first time using poll daddy. I configured it to allow people to choose more than one option. I’m not sure the results say as much as I’d like them to. Thanks to all who participated in the experiment. Next one will be better.
What is your ideal vision of a social media network? Think about what’s presently available and consider how you might change it to better suit your own needs. Drop your ideas into a comment below. I will aggregate your responses into a single post and twitter, delicious and RSS the results.
Lawrence Lessig on creativity2.0 and the law
I used to think standards were for squares. Especially when it came to the wild web. That was back in early days of my online life, before I knew about Creative Commons, Lawrence Lessig and Open Source. At that time, I didn’t realise that (democratic and fair) freedom of expression was not incompatible with (democractic and fair) standards of use. And, like many people, I didn’t regard myself as a stakeholder or participant in the development of those standards.
And then I realised there were a whole lot of people who did believe they had a stake in how their information was distributed. Ordinary citizens and professional content producers alike were taking part in a user revolution that defied the top down models of the past. And everywhere I looked, the early adopters were having important conversations about what they would and would not accept. That was 2003 when social networking services were starting to emerge as the_next_big_thing and open source models of thinking and creating were starting to take hold.
A message to the late majority: Define and demand your rights
Read on …
Continue reading ‘Our data, ourselves: The User Bill of Rights’
(CC) Rob Cottingham
One of the first groups I joined on Facebook was “Petition to get Facebook to drop the “is” from status updates.” This was back in July, when I begrudgingly opened an account.
While my friends provide this corporate datamine Facebook with life, heart and mind, the service doesn’t really give a lot back. As a “social” space Facebook is still very inhuman - from the Walmart aesthetic to the lack of user controls. The fact that Facebook doesn’t even allow commenting in their developer “blog” is an example of just how far removed this space is from established philosophies of web2.0 social and participatory media - namely, participation and choice.
Continue reading ‘Facebook’s grammar of power: The medium IS the message’
In January 2004 I read a post at Loic Le Meur’s old blog that changed my approach to online life and activity. He warned us to “build and check your virtual identity and online reputation or you will be in trouble.” This post inspired me to establish a more strategic online identity and maintain some consistency in my selected metadata (stated background, interests, visual media) and contact networks. Given recent worst practices in new social networking services, Le Meur’s advice couldn’t be more prophetic.
Facebook’s recent - and obnoxious move - to allow open searching of FB profiles outside of FB should be read as a warning sign of things to come. This, only one week after they permitted a tool called Friend Finder to bypass user settings to allow people to spam you add you as a friend - even if you had specified that access to your profile was “message” or “poke” only. This is what happened to me and others. And if that wasn’t enough, my privacy settings were compromised within hours of the automated public search. Somehow, my privacy setting changed from “friends only” search to “all my friends and all my networks.”
Delicious | Education
recent comments