why am i yelling?

Let’s see … what’s been up the past few weeks?

I haven’t given enough of a shit to read into the “don’t touch my junk” stories. I have no issue taking my shoes off, taking my laptop out of its case and getting scanned. I’ve been singled out once or twice (far less than I expected considering I’m brown) and gotten a pat down and that hasn’t bothered me either. The full body scanners do creep me out - not so much because it’ll see through my Body by Victoria Secret bra (seriously people - the best bra ever) but because it pushes us in the direction of technology that scans RF IDs (already implemented in warehouses for inventory purposes). If our credit cards or driver’s licenses start coming with RF IDs - a lot of information will be scan-able to virtually anyone persistent enough to figure out how to do it. I guess I protecting my medical history and social security number ranks a bit higher than a bunch of low-paid TSA employees getting to see a 24/7 peep show.

Shallow note of the week - which I’ve already tweeted about - TONY PARKER AND EVA LONGORIA ARE GETTING DIVORCED. I guess Tony Parker realized he’s a legitimately talented basketball player and his wife starred on a crappy TV show.

RE Obama returning from Asia without the economic commitments he wanted to get - if the US’s goal is to get China to raise the value of the Yuan it’s not going to happen any time soon. Even though the Federal Reserve has a lot of sway in manipulating the value of the dollar here, it still involves a level of democracy. I am not bashing China’s form of government in any way here. All I’m saying is that they have no incentive to raise the value of the Yuan because people are FLOCKING to them for good since its value is so low.

LOVE LOVE LOVE the kid who asked Obama why he doesn’t consider Pakistan a terrorist state. It’s a complex issue - America’s allied with a ton of countries not on the up and up in the past. The world needs to admit to itself that there is a faction in Pakistan that is hell-bent on maintaining uncertainty in the region and aiding extremists from Afghanistan. They could be doing it for so-called righteous, religious reasons or they could be doing it because the US is pouring a ton of money into the country. Despite the fact that there are _some_ Pakistanis who are sympathetic with the cause of the Taliban - it definitely doesn’t excuse unannounced US drone attacks within their borders. I vaguely remember reading something about sovereignty in my junior high social studies class …

The Facebook/MySpace announcement - So, now I can share messages between my Facebook and (non-existent) MySpace pages? MySpace needs to realize it is DEFUNCT in terms of social media - regardless of the number of users they have. Their pot of gold is the way they give artists a way to present their music, tour dates, videos, etc. Facebook does NOT have this - their fan pages for bands are grossly inefficient. They let me post messages about the band and discuss it with other fans, but that’s not what I want to do. I want to load a page - see a list of a band’s most popular, recently released songs and if they are on tour. That’s IT. Bottomline - Facebook and MySpace need to merge and Facebook needs to incorporate MySpace’s media management/presentation functionality (including the ability for an artist to style their page - sorry Facebook - I can only take so much Tahoma, grey, light blue and white).

Since there have been a million posts about this topic this week I felt like adding to the pile. Let me preface this by saying that what happened to Tyler Clementi was terrible and senseless. People have a fundamental right to privacy and expressing their sexual preferences. The other big internet privacy related case this week was Karen Owen from Duke.

Invasion of privacy has always existed. From government wiretaps to snooping neighbors, humans are inherently interested in what they’re not supposed to know about. Governments always want to have the upper hand in situations and consider data to be very powerful in the pursuit of this. The United Arab Emirates just requested that RIM provide their government with data transmitted over BlackBerry devices in the country. Wireless technology aside, people are always given incentives to report “suspicious” behavior to the authorities. Confidential informants do this all the time. Of course, what’s considered “suspicious” varies from country to country. A young woman on a date with a guy at a coffee shop isn’t noteworthy in the United States, but is definitely valuable information for the morality police of Iran.

The question is - would the kids who tweeted about and streamed Clementi’s activities behaved any differently without the technology they had? The range of the impact of what they did would have been limited without the internet. The impression I got from hearing about what the two accused of invasion of privacy, Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei, tweeted about and streamed was one or both of them thought it was significant that Ravi’s roommate was gay. I find it VERY hard to believe that this significance was considered positive. It wasn’t a sentiment of “I get to meet someone with a different background and learn about what their life is like”. It was more like “Crap. My roommate is gay. People will find this hilarious because making fun of a marginalized group of people is accepted by society.” Let me repeat - that’s what I took from it. When the facts come out all or some of this could be invalidated (or affirmed).

What we do know is that Ravi posted tweets noting that his roommate was gay, linking people to a gay message board frequented by the roommate, the fact that he saw his roommate making out with a guy on a webcam and the fact that the private activities would be streamed again at a specific date/time. Let’s think about what his capabilities would have been without the internet. He could have told his entire dorm hall and anyone who listens that his roommate was gay (and even stir up some sort of resentment). He could have set up a video camera and recorded the activity on to a tape and kept it for some sort of leverage or blackmailing purposes. These two things might not have gotten beyond the halls of Rutgers - but it’s still pretty devastating to the person whose privacy was violated. Would it be devastating enough to commit suicide? No one can be sure of that since the reasons behind suicide vary a great degree.

The case of Karen Owen is a bit different. She apparently summarized four years of sexual escapades with Duke sports players into a PowerPoint presentation and sent it to three friends. One forwarded it on and the presentation went viral. The link above has more details. Clearly, without the internet this information could not have been disseminated in electronic form. However, even if she had simply made a poster for her friends as a joke - it could have easily been copied a 1000 times and taped to doors, windows and mirrors all over the Duke campus (I saw this happen with a handwritten love letter someone wrote in my dorm my freshmen year). At this point Owen can either embrace her new reputation (and become a sex columnist or write a book like some of the other blogs are suggesting) OR attempt to carry on a normal life and hope that no one makes the connection between her name and the viral PowerPoint. She will, of course, be sued for invasion of privacy by all of the people included in the document. As far as we know, the guys included in the presentation hadn’t done anything wrong. They dated a girl in college - that’s a pretty normal activity. How were they supposed to know she had this desire to compile this information and share it with her friends? On a side note - if any one of them made a sex tape, he is a moron since those inevitably get proliferated on the internet.

I don’t think Facebook, MySpace, Twitter or blogs have fundamentally changed the way someone can invade your privacy. They just have larger audiences than a dorm hall rec room or office cafeteria. What they have done is lowered people’s expectations of privacy and increased the complexity of maintaining privacy.

I know my full name and city are available to anyone in the world who wants to find it. I’m fine with it, but I’m sure a few generations ago that would have been considered a bit “Big Brother”-ish. I know anyone can read my Tumblr or Twitter accounts and only my 40 or so friends can read my Facebook page. I also realize that when I post something on someone else’s Facebook page - the privacy policy of that user is applied to the post (this is a tricky one that I realized only after complaining about a work related thing on a coworker’s Facebook page, only to realize he was FB friends with other coworkers of mine - let’s just say I’ve embraced FB messaging and email over wall posts since then).

While I do feel that companies do need to make it easier to secure someone’s social network account, I also kind of buy into this whole “transparency” thing Mark Zuckerberg is trying to sell. I like people knowing what I think about things (and don’t really care if it negatively affects their opinion of me). But, there’s fine balance between creating an identity on the internet that represents your likes, dislikes and social life versus inane posts related to how drunk you got last weekend. 

I heard someone say “don’t post anything on the internet you wouldn’t want your mom or boss reading.” This is probably the best piece of advice for any internet user. I think the following three things should be added to it -

• Don’t post stupid self-promotional blurbs with the intent of making others think you have a better life (no one gives a crap and you just end up looking like a self-involved idiot)
• Use proper spelling, punctuation and capitalization when you post something. Since CNN and FoxNews have lowered themselves to broadcasting Facebook status updates and Tweets - I can’t stand reading something written like a three year old would (e.g. thx I can’t w8t 2 c u!)
• Stop geo-tagging posts. This is INSANELY dangerous and I don’t understand why people are raving about this functionality. It’s great the FourSquare and Facebook Places give people the opportunity to broadcast that they’re at a particular restaurant/bar/club (and indicate what they think about it), but geo-tagging Tweets or simple Facebook updates is insane. Based on the frequency you post at someone could literally map out your day (every post includes your latitude and longitude). 

People have ALWAYS wanted to marginalize people in the minority (based on ethnicity, gender, sexuality, etc. etc.) AND love broadcasting their sexual exploits (since how many people someone has had sex with is more of an indication of their success in life rather than, say, their education or job). Blaming social media tools for this isn’t the answer. People need to realize that accepting people for their differences and keeping things that happen in the bedroom - actually IN the bedroom - is the way to go.

http://www.amazon.com/Accidental-Billionaires-Founding-Facebook-Betrayal/dp/0385529376/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1285214476&sr=1-2

I read this in anticipation of the movie The Social Network coming out in theatres in October. Not being a huge fan of social networking (keeping my friend list to under 40 people should be an indication of that), I wanted to uncover all of the nefarious events that happened around the inception of Facebook. The book villainizes the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, and claims he stole the idea for the site from some of his ivy league classmates and muscled out his business manager who provided all of the initial financing for the site.

Considering Friendster and MySpace were already in existence when Facebook was launched - the concept was not very original. The unique aspect of the site was the requirement of an *.edu email address to join and the ability to only browse people within your school’s network (clearly, the site has long departed from that line of thought).

The impression I got from the book was that Zuckerberg had been asked to develop a site for some classmates who came up with the idea of a college-centric social network. They were not receptive to the changes he suggested in the requirements for the site, so he built a site in alignment with specifications on his own. The classmates who commissioned his services should have been savvy enough to recognize the potential of their idea and have Zuckerberg sign some sort of non-disclosure/non-compete contract (these guys were Harvard students after all). I believe the students have received some sort of settlement out of years of litigation (which I think is ridiculous since the concept of pages with personal information linked to other pages with personal information is in no way unique).

The second act of malfeasance by Zuckerberg documented in this book is his treatment of his business manager Eduardo Saverin (a major source for the author of this book). Saverin financed the early months of the website and was granted options in the company after its incorporation. He hadn’t, however, moved to Palo Alto with the development team the first summer after Facebook launched. He also cut off their financing after a disagreement (which lead Zuckerberg and the founder of Napster to seek financing from the CEO of PayPal). This lead to a series of stock splits that diluted Saverin’s share in the company to a point where they were worthless. I think the treatment of Saverin is worse than the allegation that the idea for Facebook was “stolen” from classmates. However, it can be argued that Saverin’s stake in the company was just representative of declining contributions as the site expanded.

As a developer, it’s really hard for me to see the concept of a social network as proprietary or unique. Message boards, IRC and Usenet can all be considered nascent forms of social networks. My personal reasons for not being a fan of social networking are based on their violations of users’ privacy. I also don’t like being free market research for companies. I don’t need 500+ “friends” and I certainly don’t need 500+ people knowing my day to day activities and thoughts. Unfortunately, this is the direction technology is headed and it’s not going to change. In fact, it’s just going to get worse with Facebook Places, Google Latitude, FourSquare and other geo-tagged social networking services. I guess all of this is a step in the right direction for all the creepy stalkers of the world.