The Onion
Showing posts with label FACEBOOK AND CIA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FACEBOOK AND CIA. Show all posts
Friday, April 8, 2011
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Facebook Censoring Online Activism
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 Activists upset with FacebookGrass-roots activists organizing boycotts against large corporations like Target stores and BP now find themselves directing some of their ire at another corporate monolith: Facebook. |
The boycotters turned to the popular social media site to spread word about their pressure campaigns and keep participants up to date on the latest developments, but those efforts became much more difficult last week when Facebook disabled key features on the boycott pages.
As the number of Facebook members signed up for the “Boycott Target Until They Cease Funding Anti-Gay Politics” page neared 78,000 in recent days, Facebook personnel locked down portions of the page — banning new discussion threads, preventing members from posting videos and standard Web links to other sites and barring the page’s administrator from sending updates to those who signed up for the boycott.
“It slices the vocal cords,” complained Jeffrey Henson, who ran the Facebook page, calling for a boycott of Target over its $150,000 donation to a group supporting a candidate some view as hostile to the gay community, Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer. “The page is now outraged” over the website’s action, Henson added.
Participants in the boycotts complain Facebook’s actions have created an uneven playing field in which ad hoc citizens’ groups face hurdles to online organizing — obstacles that corporations using social media have little trouble surmounting.
“Facebook is interfering with the function of a page dedicated to individuals organizing in response to corporate action to which they object,” said Nicholas Lefevre, a promoter of the Target boycott. “With the limited avenues for such expression and organization and the importance of the Internet to that ability, anything that threatens that expression is dangerous.”
Another Facebook page “liked” by even more people — a boycott of petroleum giant BP that attracted more than 847,000 fans — was also hit by a similar clampdown last week. Those who use the BP page to communicate about the gulf spill reacted angrily.
“It all smells fishier than the gulf to me,” said one comment on the page from a member called “Triple Bottomline.”
Organizers of the Target and BP boycotts quickly started new pages, but their followers have been slow to locate and join the new pages. By Friday, only 1,450 members had signed up for the new page from BP boycott organizer Lee Perkins and 2,507 had signed up for a new Target boycott page.
In response to a query from POLITICO, Facebook said the earlier pages were restricted because they ran afoul of the social media site’s terms of service, limiting so-called pages to individuals and entities that have some real structure in the bricks-and-mortar world.
“Facebook Pages enable public figures, organizations, businesses, and brands to share information, interact with interested people, and maintain an engaging presence on Facebook,” said a Facebook spokesman, who asked not to be named. “They're … optimized for official entities’ needs to communicate, distribute content, engage people and capture new audiences. To protect people from spam and other unwanted content, we restrict Pages that represent ideas or positions — rather than discrete entities — from publishing stories to people's News Feeds.”
“This policy is designed to ensure Facebook remains a safe, secure and trusted environment for the people who use it,” the spokesman said.
“This policy is designed to ensure Facebook remains a safe, secure and trusted environment for the people who use it,” the spokesman said.
The written guidance published on the Facebook site is somewhat vague about who can sponsor a page. The official policy says pages “may only be used to promote a business or other commercial, political, or charitable organization or endeavor (including nonprofit organizations, political campaigns, bands, and celebrities).”
Officials from Target and BP told POLITICO they made no requests to Facebook to act against the boycott pages.
Henson said he got a notice from Facebook about a month ago that he needed to “authenticate” his page. He said he tried to answer every question the site asked.
“I never heard back. Next thing I know: I’m locked out of the page,” Henson said. “I’m hoping they do the right thing and unlock it.”
Some activists said that even if Facebook’s rules are not intended to favor corporations over anti-corporate campaigns, the site’s policy does seem to have that impact.
“We think democracy works best where every single citizen’s voice is weighed equally,” said Ilyse Hogue of the liberal grassroots group Moveon.org, which is backing the Target boycott but has no connection to the disputed Facebook pages. “The whole system is titled away from those individual voices.”
Hogue noted that in the grass-roots group’s earliest days, it probably couldn’t have met Facebook’s standards for authentication, and if the group had a Facebook page, it would have been locked down.
Several social media experts said Facebook’s policies and its enforcement of those policies are too opaque and inconsistent.
“They haven’t been clear about how the terms of service apply,” said Jillian York of Harvard University’s Berkman Center for the Internet & Society. “Their policy … it might be reasonable, but I don’t think it’s well disclosed.”
York also said the anti-corporate pages seem to get more attention from Facebook. “It does seem like they’re more careful with those pages,” she said.
Officials from Target and BP told POLITICO they made no requests to Facebook to act against the boycott pages.
Henson said he got a notice from Facebook about a month ago that he needed to “authenticate” his page. He said he tried to answer every question the site asked.
“I never heard back. Next thing I know: I’m locked out of the page,” Henson said. “I’m hoping they do the right thing and unlock it.”
Some activists said that even if Facebook’s rules are not intended to favor corporations over anti-corporate campaigns, the site’s policy does seem to have that impact.
“We think democracy works best where every single citizen’s voice is weighed equally,” said Ilyse Hogue of the liberal grassroots group Moveon.org, which is backing the Target boycott but has no connection to the disputed Facebook pages. “The whole system is titled away from those individual voices.”
Hogue noted that in the grass-roots group’s earliest days, it probably couldn’t have met Facebook’s standards for authentication, and if the group had a Facebook page, it would have been locked down.
Several social media experts said Facebook’s policies and its enforcement of those policies are too opaque and inconsistent.
“They haven’t been clear about how the terms of service apply,” said Jillian York of Harvard University’s Berkman Center for the Internet & Society. “Their policy … it might be reasonable, but I don’t think it’s well disclosed.”
York also said the anti-corporate pages seem to get more attention from Facebook. “It does seem like they’re more careful with those pages,” she said.
A Facebook official confirmed that they don’t check who’s behind a page until it reaches a certain size, which he declined to specify. One social media consultant said that practice causes confusion.
“It really does have a big effect when 10,000 people or 100,000 people join a group, and they change the rules midstream,” said Dorian Benkoil of New York-based Teeming Media. “Then, they try to thread the needle by saying you can still have a page, but we’re not going to let the admin post … They say it violates their rules. Then they say, we’ll go halfway.”
Facebook has faced criticism recently for abrupt changes to its policies, particularly moves to expand public access to information on individual users. In May, in response to a public outcry and to complaints from several U.S. senators, Facebook rolled back some changes and made it easier for users to opt out of some public disclosures.
One group that has been critical of the policies of Facebook and other social media sites, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the boycotters have discovered the perils of relying on a website run by a private, commercial entity.
“They’ve set up this walled garden, and when people use these things for organizing in this context, they’re buying into the arbitrary rules,” said the foundation’s Richard Esguerra. “This is a risk or consequence of doing these things in walled gardens. … It’s important for them to decide what they might be giving up, what kind of overarching control they might be giving up, whether it’s on Facebook or any other social network.”
Some analysts said they understood the impulse Facebook felt about possible spamming or other disputes that could arise from a single individual with a Gmail address controlling a page with hundreds of thousands of followers. However, others noted that it’s just as easy to quit a page as to join one and that any page spamming people would probably lose followers.
One consultant who helps nonprofit groups building an online following said the puzzling part of the policy Facebook has applied against the Target and BP boycotters is that it goes against the prevailing Internet ethos which favors quickly formed “flash mobs”— whether they arrange mass pillow fights or rally around a political cause.
“It kind of deflates that,” said Kevin Dugan of Empower MediaMarketing. “It’s certainly not what you would think a social media site would want to do. Normally, they’re empowering things like this, not trying to stop them.”
“It really does have a big effect when 10,000 people or 100,000 people join a group, and they change the rules midstream,” said Dorian Benkoil of New York-based Teeming Media. “Then, they try to thread the needle by saying you can still have a page, but we’re not going to let the admin post … They say it violates their rules. Then they say, we’ll go halfway.”
Facebook has faced criticism recently for abrupt changes to its policies, particularly moves to expand public access to information on individual users. In May, in response to a public outcry and to complaints from several U.S. senators, Facebook rolled back some changes and made it easier for users to opt out of some public disclosures.
One group that has been critical of the policies of Facebook and other social media sites, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the boycotters have discovered the perils of relying on a website run by a private, commercial entity.
“They’ve set up this walled garden, and when people use these things for organizing in this context, they’re buying into the arbitrary rules,” said the foundation’s Richard Esguerra. “This is a risk or consequence of doing these things in walled gardens. … It’s important for them to decide what they might be giving up, what kind of overarching control they might be giving up, whether it’s on Facebook or any other social network.”
Some analysts said they understood the impulse Facebook felt about possible spamming or other disputes that could arise from a single individual with a Gmail address controlling a page with hundreds of thousands of followers. However, others noted that it’s just as easy to quit a page as to join one and that any page spamming people would probably lose followers.
One consultant who helps nonprofit groups building an online following said the puzzling part of the policy Facebook has applied against the Target and BP boycotters is that it goes against the prevailing Internet ethos which favors quickly formed “flash mobs”— whether they arrange mass pillow fights or rally around a political cause.
“It kind of deflates that,” said Kevin Dugan of Empower MediaMarketing. “It’s certainly not what you would think a social media site would want to do. Normally, they’re empowering things like this, not trying to stop them.”
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Wednesday, September 15, 2010
6 Things You Should Never Reveal on Facebook
Comment: The following "corporate media" article, naturally, fails to mention the fact that Facebook and Google are both CIA financed operations presumably set up for the sole purpose of surveillance. The greatest threat to our privacy is NOT the random terrorist or identity thief; the greatest threat is the U.S. Government.
by Kathy Kristof
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
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It is time to Wake Up! You too, can join the "Global Political Awakening"! Print this page
by Kathy Kristof
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
provided by
The whole social networking phenomenon has millions of Americans sharing their photos, favorite songs and details about their class reunions on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and dozens of similar sites. But there are a handful of personal details that you should never say if you don't want criminals — cyber or otherwise — to rob you blind, according to Beth Givens, executive director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.
The folks at Insure.com also say that ill-advised Facebook postings increasingly can get your insurance cancelled or cause you to pay dramatically more for everything from auto to life insurance coverage. By now almost everybody knows that those drunken party photos could cost you a job, too.
You can certainly enjoy networking and sharing photos, but you should know that sharing some information puts you at risk. What should you never say on Facebook, Twitter or any other social networking site?
Your Birth Date and Place
Sure, you can say what day you were born, but if you provide the year and where you were born too, you've just given identity thieves a key to stealing your financial life, said Givens. A study done by Carnegie Mellon showed that a date and place of birth could be used to predict most — and sometimes all — of the numbers in your Social Security number, she said.
Vacation Plans
There may be a better way to say "Rob me, please" than posting something along the lines of: "Count-down to Maui! Two days and Ritz Carlton, here we come!" on Twitter. But it's hard to think of one. Post the photos on Facebook when you return, if you like. But don't invite criminals in by telling them specifically when you'll be gone.
Home Address
Do I have to elaborate? A study recently released by the Ponemon Institute found that users of Social Media sites were at greater risk of physical and identity theft because of the information they were sharing. Some 40% listed their home address on the sites; 65% didn't even attempt to block out strangers with privacy settings. And 60% said they weren't confident that their "friends" were really just people they know.
Confessionals
You may hate your job; lie on your taxes; or be a recreational user of illicit drugs, but this is no place to confess. Employers commonly peruse social networking sites to determine who to hire — and, sometimes, who to fire. Need proof? In just the past few weeks, an emergency dispatcher was fired in Wisconsin for revealing drug use; a waitress got canned for complaining about customers and the Pittsburgh Pirate's mascot was dumped for bashing the team on Facebook. One study done last year estimated that 8% of companies fired someone for "misuse" of social media.
Password Clues
If you've got online accounts, you've probably answered a dozen different security questions, telling your bank or brokerage firm your Mom's maiden name; the church you were married in; or the name of your favorite song. Got that same stuff on the information page of your Facebook profile? You're giving crooks an easy way to guess your passwords.
Risky Behaviors
You take your classic Camaro out for street racing, soar above the hills in a hang glider, or smoke like a chimney? Insurers are increasingly turning to the web to figure out whether their applicants and customers are putting their lives or property at risk, according to Insure.com. So far, there's no efficient way to collect the data, so cancellations and rate hikes are rare. But the technology is fast evolving, according to a paper written by Celent, a financial services research and consulting firm.
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