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Your Facebook & Twitter Activity Is Tracked More Closely Than You Think

admin — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 12:53:06 +0000

Next time you’re Twittering your thoughts, making a status post, or taking a quiz on Facebook, remember that not only are you creating part of an eternal online identity and probably sharing your information with more people than you thought (especially see question 3 in that ACLU quiz), you’re also helping shape marketing and political decisions. We’ve written jokingly about Googlewanking and Googlewashing before, but the two latest big things on the web – Social Media Monitoring and Sentiment Analysis – are making the web a different place. On the abstractly interesting side of this, sentiment analysis sort of renders the typical CNN or Time user poll (typically called a Voodoo Poll) even more absurd than they were. Online polls have always had major shortcomings, but the main one was that of limited demographic diversity, i.e.: only dorks who take CNN polls take CNN polls. A recent classic example of their susceptibility to gaming and inaccuracy was when “moot”, the 21-year-old college student and founder of the online community 4chan.org, became the “World’s Most Influential Person” in a Time user poll. The difference with these newly evolving data mining tools is that they remove the obvious errors caused by selection bias or gaming by monitoring the unsolicited expressions of millions of users’ thoughts and feelings directly. On a personal level, another big difference is that whereas even a couple of years ago it took considerable effort to “dig through the noise” to find specific pieces of information, it is now routinely done on a large scale by companies competing aggressively in this arena (here’s a list of 10 of them, and here’s a much longer list) often to define or defend a brand. How this plays out for searching for information about individuals can be quickly demonstrated by services like 123people.com. Enter a name, and they quickly scour photos, videos, phone numbers, email addresses, weblinks, social network profiles, biographies, Instant Messenger, microblogs, blogs, news, and general documents to display info about a person conveniently on one page. This sort of thing is so easy to do that MIT student Aaron Zinman, for instance, built an art installation around the idea (thanks for the link, Hava). I’m not so concerned about this on a superfical level; thanks to all the other Ian Grays being such busybodies on the web, I’m semi-invisible in many of these searches, and I kind of like it that way. But what kind of online identity do you have?

Am I Still Hip If I Oppose Gay Marriage?

admin — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 15:16:25 +0000

Sorry Anthony, your e-mail had
unintended consequences.

Note to self: if you ever go into politics, remember the law of unintended consequences. I recently received an e-mail from the ACLU in which Executive Director Anthony D. Romero shared the sad story of the results of his outing himself with his parents. He then went on to explain why I should be concerned about California’s Proposition 8, and the rights of gay people to get married in general. I was surprised (as I found myself seriously pondering this topic in-depth for the first time) what my more complicated thoughts on the subject really are. First, I want to say that I ADAMANTLY believe in an individual’s right to have whatever kind of relationship they like with whatever gender or species they desire, so long as both are consenting and in agreement. And although none of my friends do the interspecies thing, easily half of my friends are gay, be they men or women (and half of them will want to kill me when we get around to discussing this). What Romero’s plea highlighted for me is that I don’t think I really care if the government sanctions gay marriage, because, once I really pondered my feelings on the topic, I realized I also don’t think people should get tax breaks for being married in the first place, and I don’t think the government has any place putting their stamp of approval on such agreements. For one, what if your spiritual beliefs preclude seeking government sanction? Must you live the same life as another “married” person and not receive tax and other societal benefits? And almost as important: was this concept of tax breaks for the married not simply a way for the government to endorse a lifestyle choice in the first place? Sorry Anthony, you actually helped turn a moderate liberal slightly against your cause with one e-mail. And now, in fact, I’m a little angry that the focus on this topic (which I think falls a little lower on the “issues list”, given the state of education, health care, employment, and the impact of war) has made it a cakewalk for Republican strategists to turn “values voters” into rabid neo-cons on a single topic that isn’t even officially part of the party platform.

They, The People

admin — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 02:58:26 +0000

Am I a “Constitution Voter”? Well, as outlined by the Constitution Party, I guess not. Number three of their “Seven Principles of the Constitution Party is “Family: One husband and one wife with their children as divinely instituted”. Is that a Constitution-based principle? I’ll have to read the darn thing again to be sure, but that just doesn’t sound right. I guess anybody could form a political party and call it “The Constitution Party”. I mean, Vanilla Ice called himself a rapper, right? This whole question came up for me in 2003 or so, when I said to a friend of mine that since neither party had represented my values for so long, I’d be ecstatic if a new party came together, maybe one that had a big emphasis on constitutionality. Oh well. Another dream hijacked by the power-hungry. I didn’t let that stop me from getting my free ACLU I’m A Constitution Voter bumper sticker though, gosh darn it. Which gives me an idea. One of the GOP’s key strategies over the past twenty years has been defunding the left. Maybe if we all banded together and demanded every free campaign item imaginable from our opponent (whoever they are), and then didn’t use it…

FISA: A Big Barack Obummer

admin — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 16:16:22 +0000

The passage of the FISA bill in congress last week reminded me of how glad I am that I’m usually able to maintain my ignorant dreams of utopia. This ability comes in handy at times like these, when a politician I thought I really admired so whole-heartedly caves in and signs off on what I consider to be one of the most un-American pieces of legislation to slither through the gutter that is the U.S. Congress. Hey, B.O.! You really let us down on this one! It was only October last year that Obama’s spokesperson Bill Burton said “To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies” . October Surprise, indeed. If you want to learn more about the FISA bill, Glenn Greenwald had an informative piece on Salon, and here’s the Wikipedia entry. If you want to take action, you can support the ACLU, which has filed a lawsuit questioning the bill’s constitutionality, or support the EFF, with their Continue the Fight Against Warrantless Wiretapping campaign.