Social Networking

This is meant to address social networking technologies generally – it’s a catch-all for cases where I’m talking about blogging, wikis, friendster, facebook, etc all at once rather than individually.

Facebook Fights Search Engines Over Copyright

/ Christopher Parsons

DarkKnightPirateBayThe problem with walled gardens such as Facebook, is that you can be searched whenever you pass through their blue gates. In the course of being searched, undesired data can be refused – data like links to ‘abusive’ sites that facilitate copyright infringement. As of today, Facebook has declared war on the Pirates Bay, maintaining that because links to the site often infringe on someone’s copyright then linking to it violates the terms of service that Facebook users agree to. Given that the Pirates Bay is just a particularly specialized search engine, it would seem that Facebook is now going to start applying (American?) ethical and moral judgements on what people use to search for data. Sharing data is great, but only so long as it’s the ‘right kind’ of data.

What constitutes ‘infringing’ use when talking about a search engine? Google, as an example, lets individuals quickly and easily find torrent files that can subsequently be used to download/upload infringing material. The specific case being made against the Pirate Bay is that:

“Facebook respects copyrights and our Terms of Service prohibits placement of ‘Share on Facebook’ links on sites that contain “any content that is infringing. Given the controversy surrounding The Pirate Bay and the pending lawsuit against them, we’ve reached out to The Pirate Bay and asked them to remove the ‘Share on Facebook’ links from their site. The Pirate Bay has not responded and so we have blocked their torrents from being shared on Facebook.” (Source)

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Social Networking: The Consumption?

/ Christopher Parsons

A little while ago, the New York Times ran a piece where they discussed the ‘Sticky-factor’ of Facebook. Effectively the article boiled down to the fact that it’s a nightmare to exit the Facebook ecosystem – actually removing your data from their ecosystem borders on being a Sisyphysian task. The most poignant part of the article reads:

It’s like the Hotel California,” said Nipon Das, 34, a director at a biotechnology consulting firm in Manhattan, who tried unsuccessfully to delete his account this fall. “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

The Obligations of Social Networking

Imagine this: you adopt some service or another and it doesn’t require you to exchange the popular unit measurement for access to that service (i.e. you don’t shell out cash for access). That said, you do provide an alternate form of capital – one that tends to elude a clear monetary value – your personal information. You give information concerning your religious orientation, your gender, relationship status, etc. Now, you’re not required to put all of that information into a public space, but what you do provide should be accurate to improve the service for both yourself and – this is the catchy part – the other people who are using the service. The system is more valuable both to others, and to yourself, by providing as much accurate information as possible.

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Social Networking – Why We Need to Educate Youth

/ Christopher Parsons

This is a short post, but gives three definitive examples of why we need to develop and instill norms in youth concerning how to use digital resources.

Let’s help this woman find her camera!

Here’s the story (remember that…story).

In Britain a young woman (unfortunately) lost her camera. Some delightful chap decided that, rather than keeping the camera to himself, he’d try to get it back to her. Problem: he didn’t have her name, address, or anything that identified her beyond the pictures on the camera. Solution: post all of the pictures from the camera on Facebook and encourage tons of people to join the group the hopes that someone recognizes her. Problem: the embarrassment of having adult and non-adult pictures of yourself posted on the net.

Now, it turns out that this whole thing was viral marketing – the woman is an adult model and this was intended to promote a particular adult website. Nevertheless, based on the posts in the group that was set up, people saw this as a legitimate way to deliver missing property – many didn’t see anything wrong with deliberately posting pictures of a woman in various states of dress without first receiving her willful consent.

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Education, Social Networks, and Privacy

/ Christopher Parsons

In this post I want to consider privacy from a bit of a ‘weird’ point of view: What information do you want students to reveal to each other and yourself, and what do you want to reveal to them? What ethical responsibilities do educators have to their students concerning their disclosure of information to one another?

In many classrooms, instructors and their students develop bonds by becoming vulnerable to one another by sharing personal stories with one another. ‘Vulnerability’ should be understood as developing a rapport of trust that could be strategically or maliciously exploited, though there is not an implicit suggestion that vulnerability will necessarily lead to exploitation. Some of the best teachers and professors that I have ‘revealed’ themselves as human beings – once I saw that they were like me I felt more comfortable participating in the classroom environment. With this comfort and increased participation, I developed more mature understandings of subject material and my personal stances regarding it. The rapports of trust that I developed with faculty led to the best learning environments I have ever experienced.

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Education, Web 2.0, and Privacy

/ Christopher Parsons

I have a lot that I could talk about here, but rather than working through philosophical arguments for the value of privacy in education, I want to constrain myself to establishing some key points that educators should be mindful of when using Web 2.0 applications in the classroom. I begin by listing a series of factors that organizations should consult to determine if they are collecting personal information, and then follow by talking about the value and importance of privacy statements. I will conclude by providing a brief (and non-comprehensive) list of personal information that educators probably want to keep offline, unless their University can provide granular access to the information.

Is this information personal information?

Pretty well all Web 2.0 tools gather some kinds of data from individuals that use them, be it in the form of email addresses, Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, telephone numbers, messenger names, or social networking information. Before deploying any Web 2.0 technology it is important for organizations to determine whether they are capturing what is identified as ‘personal’ data, and can do so by reflecting on the following factors:

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Brief Thoughts on Blogging and Education

/ Christopher Parsons

Blog/WebLog: a web page containing brief, chronologically arranged items of information. A blog can take the form of a diary, journal, what’s new page, or links to other web sites. (Link to “Weblogs in the Classroom)

Blogs and blogging are one of the most prominent of social networking technologies. They allow bloggers to centralize content in particular places (posts) and then have others comment on the post’s subject matter. In essence, while the authorial voice is still projected by the blog’s owner, the owner can receive near instantaneous responses and feedback. In containing topics to particular posts, and by preventing viewers from altering the original text, the poster retains some of the authority that traditional authors hold, though bloggers’ ‘strong’ voices are diminished/enhanced when posters contribute their own thoughts, ideas, and challenges to the posted content.

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