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no ethics in this data world

30 June 2014 | Culturology, Facebook, Internet, Privacy | 1 Comment

например, вы не знали, что являетесь подопытной крысой?

If you missed this outrageous study published earlier this month in an academic journal, here’s the nutshell version: In January 2012, a Facebook data scientist, along with two university researchers, tweaked the News Feed of almost 690,000 users to display more “positive” or “negative” stories to figure out if “emotions are contagious on social networks”.

That means exactly what you think it does: Facebook played a psychological mind game with its users and it used a tiny clause in its 9,000-word Terms of Service to justify its actions.

чудесно, мне кажется:

[M]any people don’t even understand the basic concept of Facebook using a relevancy-sorting algorithm to filter the News Feed to be as engaging as possible. They probably wouldn’t suspect Facebook might show them fewer happy posts from friends so they’ll be sadder in order to test a theory of social science.

и подобное ведь случается повсеместно — так или иначе.

добавлено: никакой tiny clause на момент проведения эксперимента в ToS не было. надеюсь, суд выскажет свое мнение по данному вопросу.

  

people surveilled

26 December 2013 | Facebook, Privacy, Security | No Comments

не только, впрочем, Ларри и Сергей — Марк тоже без ума от наших секретов:

A couple of months ago, a friend of mine asked on Facebook: “Do you think that Facebook tracks the stuff that people type and then erase before hitting ? (or the “post” button)”

Good question.

<...>

[T]he code in your browser that powers Facebook still knows what you typed — even if you decide not to publish it. It turns out that the things you explicitly choose not to share aren’t entirely private.

scared enough?

  

another Twitter-sized platform

29 November 2013 | Economics, Facebook, Internet, Software | No Comments

или вот другой аспект такой эволюции: как известно, руководство популярного сервиса по обмену фотографиями и короткими сообщениями Snapchat вновь отклонило предложение Facebook о покупке (размером в 3 миллиарда долларов, на минуточку — и не только).

другими словами, какие объемы прибыли и как именно планирует зарабатывать Snapchat? где находится их отправная точка?

The big potential for Snapchat, our insider went on, is to become the “start app” for a whole new generation of Internet users. Teenagers don’t really use the web these days, the insider explained. They don’t use email. And some are using Facebook less (anecdotally, because it’s more web-based and un-cool because their parents are there). They use their mobile phones. And they communicate over the phones with texts and app-based messaging services like Snapchat, WhatsApp, and Instagram.

Because of this teen behavior, the insider explained, Snapchat believes it can become one of the key “platforms” from which the next generation of Internet users[1] will use the Internet.

наше поведение определяет метаморфозы в используемых сервисах[2]. которые — в свою очередь — снова меняют нас самих.


  1. но есть нюанс.  ↩

  2. например, от машин до коммуникаций.  ↩

  

not profitable

14 October 2013 | Economics, Facebook, Twitter | No Comments

она схватила ему за руку и неоднократно спросила: где ты девал деньги?

I don’t like Twitter, but I think it is a stronger business than Facebook. That said, I don’t see how their business (the part that makes money, ads) is sustainable while they allow third party services to use the API. The most “engaged” users are the ones actively trying to avoid ads. That’s the biggest threat to Twitter making money.

can’t get that, too.

  

snowflakes

18 July 2013 | Facebook, Google, Hardware, Software, Technology | No Comments

или вот так:

When I was watching the launch event for Facebook Home, a loud alarm bell started ringing for me when Mark Zuckerberg said words to the effect that “phones should be about more than apps – they should be about people” – by which of course he meant “about Facebook”. The problem with this is that actually, we’ve spent the last 6 years making phones about more than just people. People use Facebook on their phones a LOT, yes, but they do a lot of other things as well[1]. If all I wanted was a phone about people I’d be using a $20 Nokia with a battery that lasts a month.

The same point, I think, applies to Google Glass. If you spend all day in the Googleplex, thinking googly thoughts about data ingestion and Now and the interest graph, then having ‘Google’ hovering in front of your eyes instead of rubbing on a phone seems like a really obvious progression. If everyone you know owns a Tesla and is deeply engrossed in new technology, then the idea that there might be social problems with Glass doesn’t come up – everyone’s too busy saying ‘AWESOME!’. In much the same way, no-one on the Facebook Home team seems to have realised that most people’s news feed isn’t full of perfectly composed photos of attractive friends on the beach.

жизнь суть куда больше, чем рекламный всплеск. и в этом как раз и заключается искусство компромисса: отнюдь не все мы ездим на сегвеях, но все, да, пользуемся телефонами. так и Google Glass, что выглядит, я согласен, достаточно забавно, но — вместе с тем — и чересчур оторванно от действительности.

 


  1. they’re just another app.  ↩

 
via.

  

будущие перемены

17 July 2013 | Facebook, Google, Internet | 1 Comment

или, например, что такое Facebook?

“On the desktop, they were a platform,” [BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield] says. “On mobile devices, they’re just another app. If their app becomes more interesting, they have to either create new ones, or buy new ones to keep people engaged.”

куда им надо идти завтра?

But while the internet moves fast, the world of social networking moves faster. Facebook, once a leader in almost every category it touched, now leads in almost none: It’s not the most exciting picture service, nor is it the next big messaging service, video service, mobile texting service, or news-sharing service. The only thing it definitely is is the leading identity service — something that a lot of sites are trying to take away from it.

“Online identity is under direct attack from Google,” says Greenfield, who sees Google’s service less as a social network than an identity layer — a hypothesis that explains why Google doesn’t seem to care that few use it to talk to their friends or share news, as long as they still sign up and sign in. With their invisible yet rich, real identity-tied, payment-processing identity networks, Amazon and even Apple pose a threat too.

и как?

Then there’s the issue of attention. Facebook has been, and still is, very good at getting people to spend a lot of time on its site — according to Facebook, its app logs more user hours than any other smartphone app. But winning users’ attention is not the same kind of fight as winning their allegiance for a specific type of service. Snapchat might not be a direct competitor to the Facebook app, but it’s drawing from the same limited pool of attention and time.

Early signs suggest that post-Facebook Facebook will be a company with the sole goal of taking back this attention. Its acquisition of Instagram, for example, pulled in tens of millions of existing, happy users and promised tens of millions more. But this is an expensive and difficult game, and one that companies typically play from a more established position (see: Yahoo and Tumblr). If this is the plan, says Greenfield, “the question is, should Facebook be far more aggressively using their currency — a very big market market cap — to acquire other companies?” Indeed, it’s easy to imagine a Facebook that had not only taken over Instagram, but Snapchat and WhatsApp, which together would rival Facebook in size.

эволюция происходит на наших глазах. что может быть интереснее.

  

it’s anti-monopolist

3 July 2013 | Facebook, Google, Internet, Software, Twitter | No Comments

Марко Армент написал хорошую статью вслед почившему Google Reader, и вот, что особенно привлекло мое внимание:

Google Reader is just the latest casualty of the war that Facebook started, seemingly accidentally: the battle to own everything. While Google did technically “own” Reader and could make some use of the huge amount of news and attention data flowing through it, it conflicted with their far more important Google+ strategy: they need everyone reading and sharing everything through Google+ so they can compete with Facebook for ad-targeting data, ad dollars, growth, and relevance.

RSS represents the antithesis of this new world: it’s completely open, decentralized, and owned by nobody, just like the web itself. It allows anyone, large or small, to build something new and disrupt anyone else they’d like.

или еще проще:

[T]he big players <...> want to lock you in, shut out competitors, and make a service so proprietary that even if you could get your data out, it would be either useless (no alternatives to import into) or cripplingly lonely (empty social networks).

так логично мы и приходим к вопросу о доверии:

I think that the presence or absence of an RSS feed (whether I actually use it or not) is a good litmus test for how a service treats my data.

  • Instagram doesn’t provide an RSS feed of my uploaded photos.
  • Twitter doesn’t provide an RSS feed of my tweets.
  • Facebook doesn’t provide an RSS feed of my band’s updates

It might be that RSS is the canary in the coal mine for my data on the web.

If those services don’t trust me enough to give me an RSS feed, why should I trust them with my data?

именно.

  

на самом деле

17 May 2013 | Culturology, Facebook, Twitter | No Comments

чудесная статья о том, как подростки воспринимают социальные платформы в частности и общение в целом:

What is Facebook to most people over the age of 25? It’s a never-ending class reunion mixed with an eternal late-night dorm room gossip session mixed with a nightly check-in on what coworkers are doing after leaving the office. In other words, it’s a place where you go to keep tabs on your friends and acquaintances.

You know what kids call that? School.

For those of us out of school, Facebook is a place to see the accomplishments of our friends and acquaintances we’ve made over years and decades. We watch their lives: babies, job promotions, vacations, relationships, break-ups, new hair colors, ad nauseum.

For kids who still go to school, Facebook is boring. If one of their friends does something amazing or amazingly dumb, they’ll find out within five minutes. If they’re not friends with that person, it will take 15 minutes.

How? Mobile. And not just texting.

и еще:

Kids aren’t leaving social networks. They’re redefining the word “social.” Rather, they’re actually using the word with the intent of its original meaning: making contact with other human beings. Communicating. Back-and-forth, fairly immediate dialogue. Most of it digitally. But most of it with the intent of a conversation where two (or more) people are exchanging information and emotion. Not posting it. Exchanging it.

все так, посмотрите в зеркало и убедитесь.

  

social / unsocial

19 February 2013 | Facebook, Internet, Lifeform, Privacy | 2 Comments

или вот еще о Tumblr:

Tumblr actually became huge because it is the anti-blog. What is the No. 1 reason that people quit blogging? Because they can’t find and develop an audience.

<...>

But Tumblr does not conform to this calculus, and the reason is that a large percentage of Tumblr users actually don’t WANT an audience.

my kind of approach.[1]

к тому же, вот, пожалуйста, и другой очевидный аспект:

Tumblr provides its users with the oldest privacy-control strategy on the Internet: security through obscurity and multiple pseudonymity. Its users prefer a coarse-grained scheme they can easily understand over a sophisticated fine-grained privacy control — such as Facebook provides — that requires a lot of time and patience.

использование настоящих имен при регистрации абсолютно бессмысленно для пользователя. это то, что нам очевидно пытаются навязать с одной только целью — чтобы у провайдера услуг было больше информации на основе которой он[2] сможет и дальше расширять свой бизнес. хотите ли вы пожертвовать своей частной жизнью для того, чтобы Facebook или Google+ могли положить себе в карман еще один доллар? вам решать.


  1. хи-хи:

    As long as Mom sees you on Facebook occasionally, she isn’t going to think to look for you on another site… which paradoxically frees young users to act out on a stage that seems more private to them despite being on the open web.

     ↩

  2. вежливо было бы написать “она”, но, как мне кажется, по-русски это звучит исключительно неверно. лингвистический сексизм? кто знает. должно быть, я ошибаюсь. а может это и вовсе лишь дело привычки.  ↩

  

окружение и протоколы

18 February 2013 | Culturology, Facebook, Twitter | 2 Comments

подходы меняются:

“When I was little, Facebook was the coolest thing to do. And I as got older, it got stupider and I have more commitments,” said [Maxine] Guttmann, 15, a rising junior in New York City. “On Tumblr, I feel like I can post all the stuff I’m interested in. On Facebook, not all my friends are interested in the same stuff I am. And a lot aren’t even my close friends anymore.”

<...>

For teens, Facebook has become the equivalent of Microsoft Outlook or AOL Instant Messenger, experts say: It has evolved from a hot hangout, to a practical and dull tool for chatting about homework or catching up with faraway friends. Bored, overwhelmed by huge friend groups and exhausted by the digital popularity contests Facebook fosters, many teens are taking refuge in social services such as Tumblr and Twitter.

ага.