You’re not the customer, you’re the product

by gtdonovan on September 26, 2011 at 2:44 pm · Filed under commerce, commodification, facebook, free, identity, image, monetization, privatization

h/t http://imgur.com/gallery/WiOMq

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AFP: Facebook to disable inmate accounts in California

by gtdonovan on August 10, 2011 at 4:24 pm · Filed under censorship, facebook, governance, link, police, prison, surveillance

> From the article: “Facebook has agreed to disable the profiles of prison inmates in California whose accounts have been updated while they are behind bars.”

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HuffingtonPost: Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg Says Anonymity Online ‘Has To Go Away’

by gtdonovan on July 28, 2011 at 2:42 pm · Filed under anonymity, bullying, facebook, Google, Internet, link, privacy, surveillance

> From Ms. Zuckerberg: “I think anonymity on the Internet has to go away … People behave a lot better when they have their real names down. … I think people hide behind anonymity and they feel like they can say whatever they want behind closed doors.

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Informationell Deutschland

by gtdonovan on April 19, 2011 at 10:30 am · Filed under Berlin, copyright, DE, facebook, Germany, Google, governance, informationalism, participation, privacy, property, StreetView, StudiVZ, usb, Wii, YouTube

In preparation for the 2011 Graduate Center-Humboldt University Summer Seminar that I’ll be participating in, I thought it would useful to take stock of some of the recent informational happenings in Germany:

• Germany is now the largest market for video games in Europe, driven primarily by German interest in the Wii Fit (more …).
• German laws banning the distribution of photos of people or their property without their permission is forcing Google to modify its StreetView functionality before its launch in Germany (more …).
• A number of German states, led by Lower Saxony, are now trying to prevent web services such as Amazon, Facebook, or Google from aggregating and sharing visitor information without the explicit consent of the visitor (more …).
• Facebook has grown by 260% in Germany over just the past year and Germany is now the 18th largest country in Facebook with over 2M members. However, Facebook still remains much smaller in Germany than the Berlin-based StudiVZ social network which boasts over 13M members (more …).
• A Hamburg court has ruled that YouTube can be held liable for damages when it hosts copyright-protected material without permission (more …).
• Dead Drops — an anonymous, offline, p2p file-sharing network in public space — has been established by Berlin based media artist Aram Bartholl. Dead Drops embeds USB flash drives into walls, buildings and curbs in public space, allowing anyone to plugin their laptop to share their favorite files and data (more …). h/t jgieseking

This is, but of course, a very small sample of recent happenings. Hopefully I’ll have more to report post-seminar.

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