Dear Facebook

You Rule...

WARNING: THIS MESSAGE CONTAINS BLOCKED CONTENT
Some content in this message has been reported as abusive by Facebook users

Freedom of Speech ("Free Speech") is the right to freely express in speech without limitation or censorship. It has a long history in Western civilization and in the United States is protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 19 refers to the "right of freedom and expression...regardless of frontiers." As a resolution it is not legally binding on all countries.

The term for free speech on the internet is more correctly freedom of information. There are no clear laws completely protecting freedom of expression on the internet and in the United States we tend to take our free speech and freedom of information for granted and many people make assumptions these rights are somehow "guaranteed" on the World Wide Web.

Since the beginning of the internet in popular culture we have enjoyed most aspects of what we in the United States refer to as free speech but it has largely been by the graces of the companies that operate the backhaul networks of the internet, those who run the sites on the web and in the tradition of the originations of the internet. It is not an inherent right although there are legal precedents and organizations that work to protect it. Generally the Western World has looked kindly and turned the other way, since historically free speech is culturally and legally ingrained and also benefits commercial interests. The clearest example of a country that does censor the internet is China.

Individual websites are a different matter and through User Agreements, Terms of Use Agreements and Policy Statements, which users must agree to in order to use the site, content is controlled, maintained and distributed by the website owners and operators. Your personal information is used as they desire according to the agreement. As commercial enterprises this is their right if you agree. With the advance of the Social Web and people doing their social networking over the World Wide Web with an online identity (commonly referred to as a profile), the issue of free speech has surfaced many times and in many ways. What users should remember is that websites are governed by Terms of Service and it is the right of the operators to decide what is free speech and what is not and it is the users choice to agree to them or not. If you agree, then the terms apply, keeping in mind the website probably also has a disclaimer in the terms, that they may change those terms at any time without additional agreement.

In other words if you don't follow the Terms of Service to the satisfaction of the website, they can restrict your use or discontinue it completely. It is your choice to participate or not and follow their terms, since there is no inherent right to access a website with stated restrictions, agreed to by the user. Sometimes these decisions are arbitrary and unevenly and unfairly enforced. Social networking websites are a private enterprise, presumably with the intention of making money, with legal rights of their own and realistically users have little recourse in decisions.


@TooMuchToTweet from JR Snyder Jr on Vimeo.


The warning message at the beginning of this blog post is what I now receive when I attempt to post a URL from this website blog, on my Facebook profile, to be distributed on the Home Page News Feed. Essentially jrsnyderjr.com has been blocked by Facebook from posting blog post notifications, as has been my habit daily for a while now. It occurred yesterday after I posted "On Illegal Immigration | Unless you have lived in Arizona a long time..." and some unknown user(s) reported it as abusive from the News Feed. You can read the blog post to determine if it is abusive or not and make your own decision.

This is Facebook's right under their Terms of Service. Since my primary use of Facebook has been to remain connected with family and a small group of friends by sharing photos and posting my daily blog URL and not to play games, use applications or spend a lot of time socializing on the site, a primary reason for my being there is gone. My choice is to no longer be on the site, something I've been considering anyway.

To me Facebook is a thinly disguised social engineering site whose operators have become drunk with the power of millions of oblivious users, continuously adjusting the rules, being more free to use your private information for free. They're also fluidly adjusting what is acceptable to them as being allowed on their site and applying the rules unevenly. It is a one way street I don't trust. Their grandiose Facebook Principles of  "Freedom to Share...One World...Common Welfare" coupled with their Statement of Rights and Responsibilities and Privacy Policy do not pass my smell test. In the past year a lot of issues have arisen with social websites, Facebook in particular, regarding sharing of our information through ever-changing policy. The arrogance of Mark Zuckerberg's statement in January that "the age of privacy is over" is enough for me. He is wrong.

The truth is the genie is out of the bottle. These sites already have our information and in the future what they do with it may well be out of our control now they have it. Their willingness to share with each other grows every day, Microsoft and Yahoo! being examples. Astoundingly, without blinking an eye, every indication is that more people are willing to divulge even more information about themselves than ever before. Read yesterday's NY Times article "For Web's New Wave, Sharing Details Is the Point." There is little thought about how long this information is stored and kept around and (mis)used in the future.

For those who do, that is their choice.

I've been thinking about this for some time now and my choice is not to participate any more than I already am...actually less. I am no longer on Facebook but I recognize they have my information stored. I do not wish to give up the enjoyment I gain from social networking online completely but sometimes...
it is just too much.

On Social Web Platforms

Bringing The Digital Life All Back Home...

Recently I've being spending less time on the social web and when I am on my preferred platforms, I'm using them for different reasons. Although I like Facebook (it's a pleasant walled garden) it has always seemed a bit like high school and the applications and games don't appeal to me. Twitter, where I've spent most of my time the past few years, started for me as simply a note-taking service for brief thoughts that occurred to me. It morphed into something pleasantly unexpected, a replacement for the interaction I once had on the community that existed on YouTube during 2006-2007, as well as meeting new online friends. After trying Google Buzz it is still a non-starter for me, social web celebs raves aside, currently it just seems more of the same.

It is natural these platforms progress and evolve and for me they have come to feel more like communications tools than hubs for social interaction and community. I embrace that, I find myself more interested in using them to discover new things to read, do, gather information and make contact with people for more extended interaction. My perception is the social web is narrowing down to a connection point for more personal, in-depth conversation, than can be conducted on limited space open social web forums.

Foursquare, Gowalla, Google Latitude, Yelp and other Location Based Services along with smartphones are making inroads I believe because people are looking for more depth in their online connections and want to bring the social closer to home as well as offline. A more personal web, where the platform becomes the communications tool that bridges the community people create online, to more intimate levels for deeper relationships. The internet is the replacement for the old social network, the telephone system, so it is no surprise it is making connections in the same way. Fundamentally human social networking remains the same, regardless of the tools used.

Buzz Is Not A Whisperer

Google Buzz is calling...an opportunity to make a call?

I'm still missing some pieces from the Google Buzz puzzle and I haven't got that much time to devote to it right now, possibly that's one flaw inherent in it's launch. Buzz wasn't exactly welcome in my life but I kept an open mind and clear head and now have a few plugged in thoughts about it.

In a Buzz post, I think Sheryl Breuker (The Gabby Geek) of Stardust Global Ventures, brought up an important point regarding following and that this launch could be an opportunity from the outset. A window in which we can choose who to follow, be followed by and finding new people. In my mind we have the option to make a judgment call, a chance to decide if we want our scope to be narrow or wide and for professional or personal use or both. This new connection could also be a good platform to scale up or down our online social networking if we choose.

To that end I can also see how this could end up appealing more to the business, enterprise and eventually the public sectors and subsequently more appropriate for professional and business use. It may compete just as much with LinkedIn as Facebook and Twitter. If that is the case, as an individual, it might be better to start out slowly and not poison the well. Many people have started using social web sites without thinking of the consequences and paid a price when potential clients, employers and recruiters started using these sites as research tools. The lack of real knowledge about what has happened with our personal privacy is startling to witness when something new like Buzz comes along.

It's my opinion some of the noise about privacy comes from the usual suspects. They tend to be the same people who belch junk and then wonder why they get trolled and/or hacked. Don't do stupid stuff anywhere, online or off, act responsibly and you stand a good chance of remaining intact. On the other hand, that calls for Google and other keepers of our data, to continually improve the protection of our information and privacy by giving us easy access to controls. Users shouldn't have to search and try to figure Buzz out, it must be more intuitive if they want people of this decade to feel comfortable using it. I'm practiced at figuring these things out and that factor of difficulty has made even me a bit cautious, since I don't have the time to fiddle with it right now. Like everyone else, Buzz was thrust upon me with an existing Gmail account and consequently required some immediate attention to decide what to do about it, if only to figure out how to turn it off should I want to. My personal choice was to devote a little time to it and see what the implications are.

I can't help but wonder what the person thinks who has a Gmail account because they were forced into one by YouTube, someone who is skilled at only (and only cares to be) using Gmail as email or a Blogger user that doesn't really use Gmail, about getting Buzz. Whether it was taken into consideration by Google is a toss of the coin, they either took it as a calculated risk or most likely, didn't think of it at all.

It is a good concept, I admit to being surprised at liking it as much on first impression as I do. I hope it gets better and gets a good response from a responsible audience but it needs interface improvement for privacy and controls as well as interaction. It's an opportunity to review what we want or don't want with our personal online social life and make a choice about making connections or not. I think it will gain traction because it's already caused me to re-discover and find out new things about Gmail...that in itself is a "win" for Google and probably worth their risk, intended or otherwise.

Top left photo: Albuquerque (NM) Toll and Assistance Switchboard Tandem Circuits

Bottom right photo: Sunset Point (Arizona) Communications Towers

JR Snyder Jr copyright 2010