These three Google employees may be the world’s most powerful censors

The New York Times Magazine today featured Google’s Gatekeepers - a look at the small unaccountable team within Google who decide whether and to what extent they will comply with the wishes of governments around the world who wish to regulate its operations. Encouragingly, Andrew McLaughlin, global public-policy director, is a Berkman Fellow, which is about as good a place as I can imagine to start from if you want to appreciate Internet regulation issues.

More disturbingly, Nicole Wong describes her role as finding an approach which “will allow our products to move forward in a country” (which should come as no surprise - as a publicly-held company it is legally obliged to maximise its profits).

How Wikipedia Works, a free-to-access book (also available in print) about all aspects of Wikipedia by some Wikipedia ‘insiders’ and
Is something fundamentally wrong with Wikipedia’s governance processes, a roundup of concerns from someone who has been both participating in it and studying it (inspired by this list of concerns by another critic, but adding links to specific cases).

I have not researched the subject sufficiently to have a view on the accuracy of the claims of problems but I was dismayed at the sheer number of allegations…

A friend of mine, Robin Hamman who looks after the BBC’s blog trials recently brought to my attention this study of the expressed political views of BBC Facebook users which was put out by conservativehome - an independent right wing UK website - back in October and was picked up by the Daily Mail.

The study (whose figures I have updated here using the same Facebook ad tool that conservativehome used) showed that of the 11,040 BBC staff registered on the site, 1420 staff put themselves in the “liberal” or “very liberal” category, compared with just 120 who labelled themselves “conservative” or “very conservative”. 420 regard themselves as “moderate” (the rest did not specify their political views). This compares to roughly 160k liberals and 56k conservative Facebookers in London and 847k liberals vs 233k conservatives in Facebook across the UK. (For the curious - there are < 20 self-confessed liberals working for Fox News in the US on Facebook compared with 40 conservatives and an equal number of moderates).

Of course this is somewhat embarrassing for the BBC as it provides further ammunition for those who would accuse it of liberal bias. The sample is a self-selecting sample from a self-selecting sample however, therefore no more than suggestive - and of course it includes large numbers of staff not involved in politically-sensitive work.

I find it interesting to note that the information provided probably included a large number of people who specified that their profiles (including their political allegiances) should be private. The privacy does not, however, protect users from being aggregated in order to be sold to - it is Facebook's ad sales tool that enables anyone to 'mine' Facebook to find out the expressed interests, ages and - yes - political affiliations of its users, grouped by organization. As this example shows, even aggregate data can be harmful to an organization when made widely available.

I also note that it is possible to attempt to advertise to Facebook users as young as 13 - and the ad sales tool says nothing about relevant regulations.

It seems YouTube viewers watch more anti-immunisation videos than ones promoting immunisation, and public service videos on the subject were among the most low-rated. It seems Gresham’s Law can be applied to information on the Internet as well - bad (but interesting) information can drive out good.

Ironically, the JAMA study referenced is itself subscription only!

If I were to be really cool I would say that I was among the first to join Friendster but moved to Myspace fairly early on when most of my friends-in-bands were totally ‘in’ to it (and ‘I’m here to help’). I would also say that I was invited to Joost beta (because I like to download stuff). I would also say that I’ve been ripping & burning lots of music and films from p2p’s early hay days (you have to get real about what you can take with you on the road). And although I brushed elbows with some big name record companies on this topic it didn’t refrain me from, all lovey dovey, r&b-ing. I would also say that I flirted with AIM, MSN and Yahoo Messenger but when a deceased friend kept reappearing on AIM it was time to go. I forgot my password for MSN (and gosh, I get fairly upset about Microsoft’s passport thing, so MSN got abandoned very fast) and Yahoo meant a blast from the past who kept on sending offline messages (’next!’ as they say in sheaux biz). I would also say that from the mid-1990s I taught myself some basic programming mambo jumbo and toyed with the idea of becoming a digital architect. It turned out that I had a short attention span. Never got into the hang of BBS. Yes, I do remember BBS. As a matter of fact, I stem from that period, from before when terms like ‘being networked’ and ‘digital’ seemed to become the norm for a lot of us; I know that there was no internet and no email for instance (well, for the common peeps like me). I guess these statements date me so to speak.

John Palfrey’s blog post on the Berkman Center’s project on Digital Natives raises the question who are actually these so-called Digital Natives? In his and Urs Gasser’s upcoming book ‘Born Digital’ (Basic Books, 2008) they explore and address an emerging global culture of connectivity, communication and content. Where the world is the network and the people the content… Where multi presence no longer differentiates between analogue players and the digital world. Are we then all Digital Natives? No. Are we all Born Digital? Heck, I’m not and even if I were, there would be no guarantee that I would be a Digital Native.

So, this is a discussion we’re having at the Berkman. What are the attributes? Age, culture, economics, etc. All of them? Who do they represent? What is its place in our day-to-day activities? I guess the main claim explored is the idea that connectivity and communal activities seems to be defining how people will live and work in times to come (a claim I’m critically assessing but will write about in due course). What are the implications for privacy? Safety? IP? Information quality? etc. And looking at sites like Google and Facebook where platforms are provided for us to connect (and create) we should ask ourselves how commonality here is really governed… And what that actually means from both user- and firm-centric perspectives.

So to tell you the truth: I have pimped my ‘all-features’ cell phone (truth be told that we usually lead separate lives). I would also say that I love taking pictures so possess more cameras than one might consider healthy, so transgressed into the bits & bytes of it (oftentimes end up with tears in my eyes and my good ol’ camera with real film in my hands). Aw my gawd. I’m an old fart (thank you, David Weinberger ;-).

I know it raises familiar awkward questions about Google’s market power but in this instance I have to agree. Google’s ban on advertising for essay writing services joins its existing bans on ads for “weapons, prostitution, drugs, tobacco, fake documents and miracle cures.”

Since it is illegal to advertise smoking on TV and Hollywood and TV directors are being increasingly discouraged from glamourising the practice, nicotine peddlers are following ‘citizen journalists’ into DIY media. One savvy entrepreneur has decided to produce the Up in Smoke Video Podcast - guest starring technology pundits John C. Dvorak and Steve Gibson to give it some online word of mouth - and is trying to promote it via bloggers (the creator contacted me via my weblog).

I note that while the website of the company selling the cigars and producing and promoting the podcast asks that you be over 18 to view it, there is no such barrier to access the website or directly download the podcast and the only barrier to downloading the programme via iTunes is that it is rated ‘explicit’ (a tag normally used to describe language or nudity). iTunes does let you restrict access to ‘explicit’ content but that parental control option is not switched on by default.
Alas, the hype around weblogs being a ‘free’ media where the plucky independent citizen can challenge corrupt corporate and governmental interests is obscuring the manner in which business interests are sheltering behind its current lack of regulation for their own ends (as I have blogged before).

P.S. Smoking cigars is a fatal addiction - just say no!

P.P.S. To save you a lengthy download, the quality of the acting in this ‘mini sitcom’ is, perhaps unsurprisingly, truly awful. Not even laughably awful…

According to a recent study in the December issue of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology which is summarised here:

people overestimate both their ability to convey their intended tone?be it sarcastic, serious or funny?when they send an e-mail, as well as their ability to correctly interpret the tone of messages others send to them.

So be careful out there!

Today marks the launch of Harm and Offence in Media Content by Andrea Millwood Hargrave and Sonia Livingstone (I was one of the book’s contributors). You can find the press release and a link to an executive summary of the book here and if you are in the UK you can order it online via Amazon for ?18.95 (?1 saving).

Briefly, the book breaks new ground we believe because it looks at recent research across the whole gamut of available medias - television, radio, music, press, film, games, internet, telephony and advertising - as well as the regulation associated with each medium. Something there for everyone we hope! Do let us know what you think of the book if you’ve had a look and I will endeavour to answer any questions that may arise.

Sue Thomas of the Writing and the Digital Life weblog brought my attention to a row that broke out a few days ago between Mena Trott (co-founder of a major weblog software developer) and Ben Metcalfe, leader of the BBC’s developer network. Mena was arguing that bloggers should be more civil in comments to other people’s blogs while Ben argued honesty was more important. This is an argument that will never be resolved because both sides seem to be trying to make rules applicable to all webloggers when all the evidence (including my research to date) seems to be showing that webloggers are performing a wide range of practices, each with their own appropriate norms and values.

Mena is arguably right that commenters should respect the norms of behaviour that appear to be present on a given weblog but Ben is right to suggest that in the subset of weblogs dedicated to rational critical discourse (a small subset of the whole), norms of politeness may be inappropriate and stifle debate. The real problem they are (unwittingly) identifying is not "how can we enforce or encourage a single norm of weblogging behaviour" but "how can webloggers signal what the ‘rules of engagement’ are for the spaces they create?" Perhaps bloggers could create "creative commons" style "licenses" around commonly-held behaviour norms?

P.S. In that case this blog might be labelled "comments encouraged, politeness not required, provision of evidence for opinions encouraged, statement of conflict of interest required where appropriate".