tech-ed collisions

Facebook governance - have a say!

Well, by now the recent Facebook controversy over ownership of your content is old news so there is no need to regurtitate too much of that. What is news though (for me since I haven't bothered with Facebook for a few days) is the new notice on my homepage from Facebook that says:

Facebook is announcing a new approach that allows users to have a role in determining the policies that govern the site.
Further information is available on the Facebook blog. Following the decision to revert back to the original terms of service, Mark Zuckerberg says he was "excited to see how much people care about Facebook and how willing they are to contribute to the process of governing the site." "Excited" - I'll bet there are a few more words that describe the feelings in the boardrooms and offices of Facebook and its backers when that all 'hit the fan'! Anyway - what was another publicity disaster for them has potentially resulted in something that could be tremendous for Facebook and its users - and a signal to other service providers too. From their blog:
Our main goal at Facebook is to help make the world more open and transparent. We believe that if we want to lead the world in this direction, then we must set an example by running our service in this way.
Not so sure that I am completely sucked in by the open and transparent line but I'll go along with it for the moment.
We sat down to work on documents that could be the foundation of this and we came to an interesting realization—that the conventional business practices around a Terms of Use document are just too restrictive to achieve these goals. We decided we needed to do things differently and so we're going to develop new policies that will govern our system from the ground up in an open and transparent way.
Sounds promising.
We're starting this off by publishing two new documents for your review and comment. The first is the Facebook Principles, which defines your rights and will serve as the guiding framework behind any policy we'll consider—or the reason we won't consider others. The second document is the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, which will replace the existing Terms of Use.
Now this looks interesting....
With both documents, we tried hard to simplify the language so you have a clear understanding of how Facebook will be run.
Careful now - don't get too condescending - As thousands of Facebook users have demonstrated - we're not dumb!
I believe these steps are unprecedented in promoting understanding and enabling participation on the web. I hope you will take a look at these documents, read them carefully, and share your thoughts.
Now I agree with this - let the community work with the service provider on these really important issues. Mostly, since many of us have been outraged and indignant about the change in terms of service - let's not just complain. Here's an opportunity to join in, contribute and see how it goes. Great move by Facebook.
Facebook is still in the business of introducing new and therefore potentially disruptive technologies. This can mean that our users periodically experience adjustments to new products....
When I first read that I immediately thought here we go again - we can expect future major mishaps from them again as they completely misread market sentiment and implement new 'Beacons' etc however, since there is a great olive branch being handed out here, maybe I should be thinking along the lines of it is great to see a company really pushing the limits to see what benefits disruptive technologies can bring. In our own realm of technologies for education, we operate under so many constraints and it is nice to be able to step out of that area occasionally to see how we can maybe adapt some of these ideas for the benefit of our own communities.

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Filed under  //   Facebook  

Facebook terms of service /ownership of your content

Well here's one for those of us that naively think we own the photos etc that we store in social networks and other places on the Web. A short while ago Facebook decided to change its terms of service. cnn.com/technology summarises these changes as:

The company deleted a sentence from the old Terms of Use. That sentence said Facebook could not claim any rights to original content that a user uploaded once the user closed his or her account. It replaced it with: "You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. ... (H)owever, you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content."
PCWorld reports:
the changes were actually made in early February but not widely noticed until Sunday, when The Consumerist's Chris Walters stumbled upon the subtly shifted language. The section in question explains how Facebook has an "irrevocable, perpetual" license to use your "name, likeness, and image" in essentially any way, including within promotions or external advertising.
I first heard about the changes (and the reaction) through Twitter (the value of Twitter really is increasing with its ability to really show what people are thinking about now). At the time I didn't pay a huge amount of attention to it. I understand users of Facebook were notified of the changes via a message on their home page although I don't remember seeing anything - maybe I was half asleep when that one flew by. Following the ensuing fracas and back-down by Facebook, it is again my understanding that users were notified via a message on their homepage that Facebook were reverting to their old terms of service. Now I definitely don't remember seeing that one. Maybe I should look at Facebook when I am more awake. Again, it was Twitter to the rescue and I found out about the back-down through Twitter (Note to Facebook - you really should've tried harder to acquire them!). Anyway, you'd think by now Facebook would be a bit more sensitive to the feelings of their community - Remember the Beacon fiasco? As valued as Facebook is to many of us, we really do need to be aware of concerns over privacy and ownership. Obviously others think so too such as the EU and this from Canada. So, is Facebook alone in its approach to privacy/ownership or is this just a feature of the other large social networks? The afore mentioned PCWorld post seeks to shed some light on this too. Looking at this in a positive way, it is great to see that Facebook did respond to the community reaction about the changes and reverted back to the previous terms of service. I am sure there are many others who could and should learn from this ability and willingness to respond to the community rather than continue on regardless. This whole issue has been a reminder to me that we really do need to develop our awareness and understanding of these issues as we strive to survive and thrive in a 21st Century environment. Digital literacy/citizenship is so much more than knowing how to use technologies effectively - we really need to understand the implications of what we are doing in the short and long-term. Here's another interesting post from ZDNet on 'Facebook and Privacy Chernobyls'. If, like many you are stuck with Facebook whether you like it or not because that's where your network is, here's some advice from Lifehacker on privacy settings you should know. When I first started to consider the whole issue, my first response was something along the lines of .. well, I'm stuck with Facebook because that's the only network I share with a number of important contacts for me but I don't like what they're up to so I will have to store my photos (yes, I still cling to the notion that they are mine) somewhere else and just link to them. Now, if only I could find a trustworthy service that will guarantee that they will remain mine. This gets interesting for me in another area that I am looking at and that is eportfolios. Like a number of people, I have been exploring the notion that an eportfolio model may be a set of services from around the Web that are aggregated together in some fashion for management, presentation etc. Now if you are storing digital artefacts for you eportfolio in any number of places (eg Flickr, Google Docs, YouTube, Slideshare, blogs etc) you really do need to be aware of the terms and conditions associated with those services if you are going to effectively manage and own those artefacts.

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Filed under  //   Facebook  

on Facebook and Identity

Very interesting post appeared on the ABC news site titled 'Lawyer uses Facebook to serve documents'. A Canberra court has approved using Facebook as a way to serve documents. Apparently, the co-defendants have been hard to reach but there are Facebook accounts which list them as friends and has their birth dates. This would seem to be enough for the judge to qualify Facebook as a legitimate way of serving them. It would be great to see the full transcript that outlines this decision because quite a bit more information would really be needed to properly identify a person. Somehow I don't think I can walk into a bank and have an account created simply by pointing to a website with a claimed birth date and list of friends - that's why they have the 100 point checklist. Claiming identity and authenticating identity are worlds apart. Think of your favourite celebrity. How many sites are there of them that contain far more personally identifying information on them than a birth date and list of friends yet are not maintained at all by the celebrity. What about sites that masquerade as people. It's not difficult to setup an account on social networking sites masquerading as someone else (see this post discussing a number of fake John Howard Facebook accounts). Some services, such as ClaimId, offer an attempt for you to (re)establish your digital identity. Web personalities such as Leo Laporte use this to try to help them. So that's one problem. But just like defendants may not often be at home, what guarantee is there that they will access their Facebook accounts or receive notification that there has been an attempt to contact them via it? Will logs be requested of social networking service providers, ISPs etc in an effort to prove such accounts have been accessed by the 'claimed identities' of the account holders? How many social networking accounts have you opened that you no longer access or particularly care about? How many have you forgotten about? It would seem to me there are a whole lot of potential challenges to this judgment but it certainly highlights the importance of your digital identity(s)!

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Filed under  //   Facebook   identity  

on Twitbook

Just reading the article on the unsuccessful negotiations of Facebook to buy out Twitter. My first thoughts are that I am relieved that deal didn't go through. According to the article it failed over the price. I wonder what Facebook and Twitter users think of such a takeover. According to this ZDNet post,

The microblogging service competes directly with Facebook's own "status" feature, to the point where many Twitter users have configured their Facebook statuses to display their Twitter statuses.
Given that, some Facebook-Twitter users are probably ok with it. What about Twitterers only, or those that like the simplicity/purity of Twitter. My immediate visions are of a Twitter interface wrecked by 1,000's of useless plugins and irrelevant, annoying advertising. Then we have interoperability. One of the great things about Twitter is its openness. It has great apis, very liberal use of RSS. Not so sure that Facebook has quite the same philosophy here. Sure, Twitter is or has been unreliable at times but at what price (to the total experience) should those niggles be addressed? Business is business and these companies need to work hard to maintain their position but I hope in any negotiations they consider their respective end-user communities and what attracts those communities to their relevant services. Can't miss the opportunity to do a plug for the social network that we developed here - have a look at me.edu.au if you want to see an alternative designed for those in education and meet up with some educators doing some fantastic stuff on the Web.

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Filed under  //   Facebook   Twitter