Posted: December 22nd, 2011 | Author: Erica | Filed under: Social Media Platforms, Sociology of Social Networks | Tags: activism, culture jamming, Facebook, newsjacking, privacy, Sponsored Stories | Comments Off
Facebook is trying to mitigate how ticked off people are going to be when Sponsored Stories ads start appearing in people’s news streams, with a subtle little ad of their own at the top of the page.
It's adorable how proactive Facebook is being before the storm of anger over ads in news feeds https://t.co/65UiDLVu They’re anticipating the backlash & trying to gently implant the meme that “selling your private information is just the cost of using Facebook”.
It all sounds very reasonable. What exactly’s going to happen?
Your likes, posts, check-ins etc will become little ads for the brands you’re interacting with.
Facebook’s reality checking us in advance because they know people may react especially poorly to being featured in ads for businesses they don’t necessarily want to promote. And…
If people are angry the first thing they may do is unlike the brands that are using them. Besides removing the permission marketing channel created by likedom, this will no doubt create acrimony (or “a bad brand experience”) between people & the brands they formerly trusted.
But that’s Facebook’s problem. On to the evil idea.
Privacy Activists could jack sponsored stories
Here’s how I think it could work:
- Activist likes a brand & ‘publicly’ posts culture-jamming content on their wall or
- Activist @-mentions brand in a ‘public’ status update without liking
- Activist collective and/or friends of the activist ‘like’ the post a lot, to drive up its credibility
- The robots that select sponsored stories notice & repost as an ad
- A Skittles-level takeover of Sponsored Stories ensues.
Possible? It relies on mighty slack non-human CRM between Facebook & its customers, the advertisers—that is, nobody actually checking the content of the stories that algorithms think are relevant & popular. And it relies on non-anonymous collective action. But people have been in the mood to occupy lately, don’t you think?
Posted: December 5th, 2011 | Author: Erica | Filed under: Social Media Platforms | Tags: Facebook, photos, privacy, tagging | Comments Off
Ever notice that when you tag someone in a photo, you’re forced to allow their friends access to the image? Not enormously private if either tagger or taggee was trying to keep a low profile relationship with regards to the taggee’s friends.
See—so you’re choosing your friends to see your photo there—basically the most private setting without getting all specific.
But right underneath, in palest #808080, it’s noted that friends of the tagged person—not just your friends, as selected in the drop-down—will also be able to see this photo, your caption, and just generally take note of your existence. It’s not clear if they can comment on the photo or, god forbid, share it.
Optimistic investigation of the audience drop-down only reveals less privacy—the dreaded, unvetted FoFs—or specific people/lists.
Unless you make a list of all your (preapproved) friends, you can’t limit the photo to the people you’ve friended (which includes the person you’re just tryna tag). You have to broadcast your existence to the tagee’s network.
That’s unnecessarily public, don’t you think? What if you’re a minor, a mom, a lurker, or otherwise Nymmed-out individual? Facebook hobbles tagging functionality if you don’t feel like exposing yourself to FoFs. That’s a pretty specious commitment to granular privacy—technically possible but disengenously user-unfriendly.
Posted: March 8th, 2011 | Author: Erica | Filed under: Culture & Cultural Anthropology, Tips, Tricks, How-To's & Top 10's | Tags: ethics, personal responsibility, privacy | Comments Off
Privacy—personal dignity through data security—is more than locating obscure Facebook settings or accepting unread Terms of Service; it’s about creating the kind of world we want to live in with our behaviour.
I’m sometimes privileged to information that belongs to other people, and I’m evolving an ethical approach to handling that sensitive information. Here’s my policy.
“Look away.”
There are times when you can easily read someone’s email, their private messages, their browser history. Don’t even look.
“Gossip a whole lot less.”
For your own sake: what you commit to type can always come back to bite you in the ass, and can make you look bitter, mean or untrustworthy (which is kinda what you’ll be).
For other people’s sake: when I was inspired to visually enhance the Manitoba Time slogan, I didn’t link to the branding document someone sent me. I don’t know that it was top secret, but I suspect heads would be rolling at my agency if staff had inadvertently left it where it could be discovered.
If you think it might get someone in trouble or make them look bad, keep it to yourself.
“Tell ‘em if you can see their unmentionables.”
Let other people know, quickly, tactfully & privately, if they’re exposing a little too much beer snake photography on Facebook. Often people are unaware what laundry they’re airing.
If you had spinachy teeth or you were flashing a little crack, you’d want someone to say something, right?
“Ask permission.”
Get an explicit ok to tweet, blog or update about new projects and other might-be confidential stuff. I figured this out after more than one person looked me in the eye and said “Don’t tweet this”.
Posted: March 3rd, 2011 | Author: Erica | Filed under: Advertising, Branding & Retail, Social Media Marketing | Tags: permanent record, privacy, retail, sharing, Storify, tweets | Comments Off
Does the no-photography-in-malls thing make any sense in 2011?
InsightExpress reported in July 2010 (so, a long freakin’ time ago) that 82% of consumers use their phones while shopping. If citizen marketer-types want to spread your brand, for goodness’ sake, let—if not facilitate, if not encourage—them.
Ian makes a pretty solid point. Beyond the marketing value of social brand promotion, new technologies like barcode reading are going to have trouble gaining traction if the staff rush you out the door whenever you whip out your phone.
B&BW has over 1.5 million Facebook fans, so they’re doing just fine in social media (though fan photos skew towards shots of girl’s bathrooms, ew.) The mall security mentality is just a legacy thing that should be rethought and a more sociable photography policy communicated to retail staff.
Storify scared me
I put the above together with Storify, which is a snappy way to assemble a Twitter conversation. Speed ultimately depends on the verbosity of your acquaintances; thank god for dated tweets.
You’ll note it’s not a published story, just an image. I got too scared to pull the pin and “publish” once my tale was ready to roll.
What does “publish” mean? Where is it going to go? (On Storify? Automatically tweeted? On my permanent record?) Will it phone Neil & Ian and tell them what I’ve done (I think so)?
I love the—I’m not going to say curatorial, but you know what I mean—functionality of Storify, but I’m pulling back from charging everything on the privacy concerns credit card these days.
Even the FAQ sounded a shade ominous. Storify’s product wouldn’t work very well if tweets disappear, so I get why they need to do this, but today at least I felt like the whole thing was getting too serious.
I’m a tweet deleter, but that may no longer be a valid butt-covering strategy. Take note.
Posted: January 17th, 2011 | Author: Erica | Filed under: Social Media Platforms | Tags: Facebook, privacy | Comments Off
Update: Facebook received some “feedback” over the weekend, and changes are afoot. All I see is PR—they don’t say it won’t be happening, just that people need to be made “more clearly aware” that they’re sharing this data. @JulesPolonetsky—Co-chair and Director of the Future of Privacy Forum, former Chief Privacy Officer at AOL & a great guy to follow if you’re watching the privacy issue—says to hang on.
When you start using a Facebook app, like games and quizzes, you typically click some sort of “allow” that lets the app access your personal information.
Facebook will now include your home address & mobile number in the information handed over to the developers of these applications. Your friend’s numbers & addresses won’t be included.
Some are questioning the Friday evening timing of this announcement, and some are encouraging people to remove this data from their profiles before bad things happen to it.
Facebook, on the other hand, is coming up with ever-easier one-click methods of squeezing more specific location & personal data from users. I spotted this “fun” quizvertising a day or 2 before I heard about the change in app permissions.
I underestimated it as merely pesterous, hamfisted data-mining before I understood just why they wanted to know.
Taken together it sounds like Facebook really wants to offer advertisers this data. Crank the dial on the privacy metre from “annoying” to “ominous”. Your social norms have been warned.
Posted: November 30th, 2010 | Author: Erica | Filed under: Tips, Tricks, How-To's & Top 10's | Tags: image, permission, photography, privacy, release, video, videography, waiver | 2 Comments »
Modern day marketers often find themselves capturing content at live events to feed their brand’s public’s insatiable appetite for news. At least if they’re good modern day marketers, they do.
But is it ok to use all this glorious content? iPhone melting in one’s hand from the furious Twitpic and YouTube uploads, one suppresses fleeting concerns about posting images one didn’t exactly ask permission for, steeled by some aphorism about it being better to ask forgiveness, etc.
As this is part of my daily job, I figured I better get to the bottom of this. Surely there are laws, right?
Here’s what a number of Winnipeg video production houses & photographers think. Everyone seems to rely on people’s expectations of privacy (Are you in a public bathroom? You can reasonably expect not to be videotaped) to set the stage for general ok-ness, except for commercial purposes.
Criminal Code of Canada, 162. (1):
Every one commits an offence who, surreptitiously, observes – including by mechanical or electronic means – or makes a visual recording of a person who is in circumstances that give rise to a reasonable expectation of privacy.
James Swirsky, Principal
BlinkWorks Media
As we understand it, in Canada, you can film anyone in public as long as you are on public property. One document that we found quite useful is the ‘Photographer’s Right‘ doc. It is made with the US in mind, but I assume the same info holds true for Canada.
To be truthful, we’ve never gone too far out of our way to find out the specific laws, as it has never really been an issue.
Most of it is pretty common sense. Public place: fair game. Private property: permission may be needed.
For a small shoot, our strategy is often shoot first, and be polite if anyone protests. Most people are quite reasonable and accommodating. It’s usually when a camera person adopts a ‘it’s my right to film wherever I want’ attitude that things get messy.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: November 13th, 2010 | Author: Erica | Filed under: Social Media Platforms | Tags: email, Facebook, privacy | 4 Comments »
I don’t want to be curmudgeonly about this, but I just don’t need Zuck’s tentacles wrapped around everything I say to other humans. You can break down my objections into 2 categories: utility and privacy.
Utility, or the lack thereof:
- I already have 8 email addresses. I’m covered. My brain can hold no more permutations of my username/passwords.
- Email is not an area wherein I need innovation. I’d do away with it entirely if it weren’t for business communication.
- Facebook private messaging virtually is email, and it includes the ability to message people you aren’t friends with (so, slightly more useful than email, because I don’t need to know their address). The only thing it lacks is file attachments, which would be easy to incorporate without the new-interface-learning-curve Facebook users hate so much.
Privacy, or the seriousness of the potential lack thereof:
- Email isn’t particularly social, as Google Buzz so dramatically underlined. I have Xobni and feel creepy enough as it is when I see people’s Facebook picture coming up in their email.
- Let’s Google our memories for the numerous occasions where Facebook revealed private messages and photos, sent them to the wrong people, skywrote them over our hometowns, etc. Security, not their strong suit. Commitment to privacy, not their strong suit.
- Do you want Facebook to read your email (necessary for the contextual advertising this is surely destined for)? I delete old private messages already, scared they’ll resurface in some future privacy debacle. I don’t want them to have my browsing history either, xo Rockmelt.
